After coming under heavy scrutiny from members of the public and the business community the Minister of Immigration Fred Mitchell has placed his full support behind immigration officers.

Minister Mitchell, in a press statement yesterday, said immigration officers have a difficult and dangerous job and that moral has been low and neglected in the department for the past five years.

“It is not worthy of us as a people then to reward hard working officers with denunciations without at first knowing the facts of what transpired and even then speaking with discretion and decorum,” he said.

“I want the hard working officers of the department to hold their heads up high as they lawfully discharge their duties, treating people with respect and carrying out their duties with decorum. In this they have the government’s full support.”

Last week, members of the public criticised immigration officers after they removed an American sea lion trainer from her job after she failed to produce documents that she could live and work in The Bahamas.

She has since been released and is back on the job.

The minister echoed the words of Baha Mar’s Robert Sands who said that at all times the Immigration Officers were respectful while doing their jobs.

“This is in stark contradistinction to other spokesmen from the business community who having admitted that they did not know the facts of what transpired with regard to the immigration checks, went on to berate and defame the department, the officers and their actions,” he said.

“This is indeed regrettable. We trust that in the future language will be more appropriate and proximate to the conduct.”
Minister Mitchell believes it is important that a signal is sent out from the highest levels to immigration officers who work the front lines along with other law enforcement agencies in the defense of this country that they are appreciated by the government for the work that they do.
He added that the department does a good job given the resources and manpower available to them.