Fraudulent documents rampant in TCI

Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer

#TurksandCaicos, August 28, 2022 – Document forging is rampant in the Turks and Caicos, and even more concerning, the Immigration and Border services are having difficulties telling the real from the fakes.

This is the second department in the Turks and Caicos to admit that they are having difficulty telling fraudulent documents from genuine ones in recent weeks. The Ministry of Health had a similar issue that was so widespread, they had to revamp the entire migrant health system.

In both cases, authorities described the fakes as common and passable enough to make identification difficult.

Arlington Musgrove, Minister of Immigration and Border Services, discussed the issue in a press conference last Thursday where he gave updates from a recent meeting in Jamaica.

Musgrove and his team visited Jamaica along with the premier the week prior, in an effort to collaborate with Jamaica’s own border services and immigration teams during which they discussed the security of documents.

“This was of much interest to us because of the vast number of fraudulent documents that are submitted to this government on a daily basis and the difficulty of our office in verifying the validity of the documents,” Musgrove said.

When questioned about the police response to the illegal practice, Musgrove said as with all criminal investigations, they were ongoing and so he could not speak to them. There have not been any releases from the police to Magnetic Media regarding arrests because of fraudulent documents recently.

While he declined to detail what they were, he said the Jamaican office had safeguards in place to validate documents.  Musgrove maintained that the system was quick, efficient, and verifiable, and they wanted to replicate it as soon as possible, maybe even by the end of August.

“We are trying our best to get this as quickly as possible to the islands.  We don’t have the time or date that we want to implement this, but it’s urgent.  The health ministry’s having serious problems with that as well, but we are working tirelessly to finish up by the end of this month.” he said.

The Jamaican Port Authority has also been invited to speak to the cabinet soon.