The crime was horrifying enough — a nightclub owner, hacked to death with a machete, was found buried in pieces. However, what really outraged people was that the accused killer had been deported from the US to his native Grenada as a convicted felon.
As a foreign-bred criminal, the suspect never should have returned to the close-knit tropical nation, relatives of the victim and others said. Islanders called for more vigilance over deportees by the government, which says it needs help from Washington to handle the return of hardened convicts.
“I hope that my brother did not die in vain and something can be done to monitor these criminal deportees,” said Gemma Raeburn-Baynes, a sister of the nightclub owner, Michael Raeburn-Delfish.
The US has deported thousands of convicted criminals to the Caribbean annually since 1996, when the US Congress mandated that every non-citizen sentenced to a year or more in prison be kicked out of the country upon release. In all, the US is responsible for about three-quarters of the region’s returning criminal deportees, with the UK and Canada accounting for most of the other ex-cons arriving in the islands.
It’s a phenomenon that also afflicts many parts of Central America, where street gangs that grew out of Los Angeles spread to the region through massive deportations. Brutal and powerful, the Maras are blamed for rampant violent crime, extortion and more recently acting as enforcers for drug cartels.
In the Caribbean, governments say deportees are exacerbating crime in nations with high levels of violence, such as Jamaica. On the smaller islands such as Grenada, once considered idyllic havens from gang violence, officials say the returning deportees are partly to blame for increasingly bold and sophisticated crimes and homicide rates soaring to record levels.
The US is attempting to defuse tensions with island governments by exploring programs to help them reintegrate deportees. During a visit to Barbados in June, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the US is no longer ignoring complaints that have topped the Caribbean’s diplomatic agenda for more than a decade.
US officials say privately that the deportations cannot be blamed for the increase in violent crime, but declined to discuss the issue on the record, saying the US does not want to hurt relations with Caribbean governments with which it cooperates on other issues.
The man accused in the machete attack in Grenada, Ronald Michael Phillip, 55, was deported from the US on July 6, 2000, the day after leaving a state prison in Uncasville, Connecticut, where he had spent more than six years.
Island police know only the rough outline of his life abroad: Phillip moved overseas in 1986 and lived in Canada and Brooklyn, New York, before moving to New London, Connecticut. He was arrested in December 1993 on assault and drug charges.
However, the officer who found Raeburn-Delfish’s severed head and limbs in three shallow pits on Sept. 5 said the nature of the murder led him to believe the suspect was a practiced killer.
“He had a level of experience with dealing with dead people or animals,” forensics expert Trevor Modeste said. “We don’t usually have crime like that. We don’t usually have planned and executed murders.”
Raeburn-Delfish was Phillip’s landlord, but no motive has been established in the slaying. Phillip is charged with Raeburn-Delfish’s murder.
At the heart of the problem is the disparity of wealth between the US, where migrants often learn their criminal ways, and their poor homelands, where jobs are scarce and police resources are limited. Moreover, islanders who often left their native lands as children return to countries they barely recognize, with no remaining family.
However, smaller islands are increasingly leading the calls for help from Washington. A Grenada government spokesman said they lack the counseling, monitoring and housing services needed to absorb deportees with serious criminal records.
Island governments say the deportee issue will remain a sticking point with Washington until they see more action.
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