In May, accounts emerged in local media that authorities had closed the southern port of Cedros, one of the main arrival points for passenger boats from Venezuela, and where many people arrive legally to buy food and supplies that have become scant and overpriced amid the turmoil. There have been reports that Trinidad and Tobago’s Coast Guard has prohibited vessels from crossing the country’s maritime border, sending passengers back to Venezuela, and detentions of migrants seem to be on the rise. In a video uploaded to Facebook on June 3, a group of Venezuelan men held at the Immigration Detention Center announced that they were on a hunger strike because they lacked access to proper medical care and had not yet been told by officials when they would be released. While conducting research at the country’s maximum security prison, University of West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine Law Dean Rose-Marie Belle Antoine told me she discovered the government was using the facility to house an overflow of immigration detainees.

Xenophobia seems to be rising. The Venezuelan “issue” has consumed the news cycle. Some Trinidadians fear that the new arrivals will threaten their job security and pull down already stagnant wages. In 2015, Trinidad experienced a recession due to falling oil and gas prices, and the current unemployment rate sits at 4.8 percent. On Facebook, comments from concerned citizens range from cautious optimism to blunt racism. “If you organise and coordinate the process properly there would be no problems. The system you put in place is inadequate,” one Facebook user wrote. “Back them up and send them back home we have more than enough of them already,” wrote another.

Althea La Foucade, head economist at UWI St. Augustine, believes the government should adopt a measured approach. Recent arrivals could be instrumental in revitalizing industries like manufacturing that have struggled to retain workers, but too many foreign nationals competing for jobs against local employees could raise the unemployment rate and adversely impact the economy. UWI economist Roger Hosein believes the islands could stand to absorb at maximum 54,000 low-end workers. “If we could increase employment in the agricultural sector,” he told me, “by having a biased work permit program that sends Venezuelan workers into the areas that generate foreign exchange or prevent the use of foreign exchange, by import substitute production, then these workers can add tremendous value to Trinidad and Tobago’s economy.”

Constructive ideas for how Trinidad and Tobago should respond to the influx, as well as increasing pressure from the U.S. to isolate the Venezuelan regime, are complicated by the countries’ relationship. The neighbors share oil and gas reserves and cooperate on hydrocarbon exploration. “The current prime minister wants to maintain that relationship [with Maduro] and it comes at a time when the U.S. administration is doing whatever it can to isolate Venezuela from its Caricom allies,” University of Alberta political scientist Andy Knight told me.