The Jamaica Council of Churches (JCC), notes with profound concern and ethical distress the developing negotiations regarding a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Government of Jamaica and the Government of the United States of America concerning Third-Country National (TCN) deportees.
While the Council notes the recent clarifications by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Security, Dr. Horace Chang, denying initial media reports of a massive 10,000- person quota and outlining that Jamaica is intended to serve as a temporary transit point hosting no more than 10 individuals at a time, our core ethical and systemic anxieties remain completely un-allayed.
As a fellowship of Christian communions bound to the moral, spiritual, and social well being of our nation and the wider global family, the Council feels compelled to break its silence. Bilateral diplomacy and regional migration management are not merely administrative or technical tasks; they are profoundly moral undertakings.
I. A Troubling Cloak of Secrecy and Illogic
A primary and deeply distressing dimension of this developing arrangement is the total lack of transparency surrounding its operational frameworks. The Council, alongside the wider Jamaican public, has not been made aware of the specific details of this arrangement, and this systemic opacity concerns us all.
When statecraft takes place behind closed doors, it evades necessary ethical and democratic audit. We are compelled to ask the fundamental questions that the architects of this policy have failed to answer:
⮚ Why are persons being sent to third-party partner countries like Jamaica rather than their country of origin?
⮚ Wouldn’t direct repatriation to their homeland have made more sense?
⮚ If the sending authorities harbour genuine, legitimate safety or security concerns
about the deportee’s home country, how is sending them to a third country going
to help mitigate that situation?
A full, transparent, and rigorous explanation is needed immediately from the Ministry of National Security and Peace and the Office of the Prime Minister. Shifting human
displacement from one shore to another does nothing to heal the root causes of regional and global instability; it merely outsources the logistical burden.
II. The Ethical Contradiction: A Sacred Trust Erased
The JCC observes a troubling structural double standard in our nation’s approach to migration governance. For decades, our successive administrations have pleaded a lack of systemic capacity, fiscal room, and infrastructural resources to justify the rapid, unceremonious repatriation of spontaneous regional arrivals—most notably our brothers and sisters fleeing the harrowing humanitarian catastrophe in nearby Haiti.
We have been told repeatedly that Jamaica cannot absorb the vulnerable at our gates. Yet, when a proposal is brokered with a global superpower, our structural incapacity is suddenly set aside to accommodate a specialized transit apparatus.
Public policy is a sacred trust because it is intimately tied to human life and dignity. When that trust is weakened by opportunism, the consequences are felt most acutely by the vulnerable. To turn away the desperate seafaring migrant while opening an official transit pipeline for a superpower’s unwanted populations is to be found fundamentally wanting in the scales of justice.
We cannot trade our moral birthright for political expediency or foreign assistance dividends.
III. The Standard of Holy Scripture
We remind our political directorate and the wider society that both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures speak with absolute clarity regarding the treatment and commodification of the displaced:
⮚ The Prohibition of Sale and Externalization: The Prophet Amos thunders divine judgment against nations precisely because, “they sell the innocent for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals” (Amos 2:6). Human beings bearing the Imago Dei—the Image of God—must never become collateral or leverage in bilateral transactions.
⮚ The Mandate of Sanctuary: Holy Scripture explicitly forbids the forced extradition of those fleeing oppression. Deuteronomy 23:15-16 commands: “If a slave has taken refuge with you from their master, do not hand them over. Let them live among you wherever they like… Do not oppress them.”
⮚ The Christological Metric: In the Christian Scriptures, our Lord Jesus Christ identifies himself directly with the displaced foreigner: “I was a stranger and you invited me in” (Matthew 25:35). In the light of the gospel, the fast-tracking of individuals into legal limbo without robust due process is not a victimless bureaucratic exercise—it is an assault on Christ himself.
IV. Alignment with the Global Church
The JCC does not stand alone in this assessment. We echo and affirm the courageous stances taken across the global ecumenical family. If our global mothers and fathers in God, especially in the global north, can stand against the policy machinations of their own wealthy governments, the Church in Jamaica must equally resist becoming a compliant partner in the externalization of borders that compromise human dignity.
V. Our Call to the Government
We acknowledge that the government faces complex national security challenges, economic constraints, and geopolitical pressures, particularly in an era of aggressive international enforcement. However, national development plans cannot be achieved through the degradation of international humanitarian conventions or the risk of chain refoulement—as illustrated by the tragic administrative error that saw a Jamaican citizen unlawfully deported to Eswatini in 2025.
Therefore, the Jamaica Council of Churches calls upon the Andrew Holness-led administration to:
1. Cease Immediate Negotiations: Halt the finalization of this TCN Memorandum of
Understanding until it has been subjected to rigorous, transparent parliamentary debate and broad civic consultation.
2. Provide Full Disclosure: Release the complete text and operational guidelines of the proposed transit arrangement to the public to answer the logical contradictions regarding third-country routing.
3. Affirm Non-Refoulement: Provide absolute legal guarantees that no foreign national transferred to our shores will be denied an individualized, fair Refugee Status Determination (RSD) process, or pushed back into territories where their life or freedom is threatened.
Borders, transit hubs, and asylum pipelines are places where the ethical character of a society is tested. It is where policy meets pain, and where systems must serve people at their most fragile.
We urge our leaders to choose the path of righteousness, equity, and genuine international solidarity over the fleeting convenience of transactional diplomacy.
Rt. Rev’d Garth Minott
Suffragan Bishop of Kingston
President, The Jamaica Council of Churches
