“Small Two-by-Four Countries trying to be Macho”: MP Trevor Walker Condemns Caribbean Leaders for Failing to Unite on US TCN Deportee Negotiations

Barbuda MP Trevor Walker has delivered a scathing rebuke of Caribbean leaders for negotiating individually with the United States on the third-country deportee issue instead of presenting a unified regional position — warning Parliament that the fragmentation has left every small island state vulnerable and exposed, negotiating alone against a superpower with nothing to offer but compliance.

MP Walker’s criticism, delivered during Monday’s parliamentary debate on the White Paper resolution, targeted not only the Browne administration but the entire current generation of Caribbean leadership — accusing them of prioritising personal political interests over the collective survival of the region’s people.

“Not Even the Box the Cards Came In”

MP Walker framed the Caribbean’s failure to unite in the starkest possible terms, extending his now-famous “no cards” metaphor to encompass the entire CARICOM community.

“Here you are, these small two-by-four countries, trying to be macho — some of them trying to be macho — without cards, or even the box that the cards came in, putting our people in a precarious situation,” he told the House.

The image was deliberately humiliating — and deliberately accurate. Individual OECS and CARICOM nations negotiating bilaterally with the United States on the deportee issue hold very little strategic leverage, no economic weight, and no diplomatic muscle that Washington is obliged to respect. A unified CARICOM member states bloc — representing some 18 million people, a shared maritime space, and a collective diplomatic voice — would not have transformed the power asymmetry overnight, but it would have given the region something it currently lacks entirely: a negotiating position that would be more difficult for the United States to ignore.

Instead, as MP Walker pointed out, each country has gone its own way. Jamaica signed an MOU accepting up to 25 deportees every two weeks. St. Kitts and Nevis has accepted individuals. Dominica, Grenada and Belize all previously announced their own bilateral agreements with the US to accept the TCN (third-country nationals) deportees. Antigua and Barbuda is negotiating its own terms. And no two countries are operating from the same playbook.

CARICOM Met — and Said Nothing

MP Walker expressed disbelief that the recently concluded CARICOM Heads of Government meeting in St. Lucia — attended by the Prime Minister and regional leaders from across the Caribbean — failed to produce any collective position on the deportee issue whatsoever.

“You had a CARICOM meeting, which ended recently, and at no time have you heard CARICOM discuss this issue as a major Caribbean issue to be confronted as to how they’re going to deal with this situation,” MP Walker said.

He contrasted what CARICOM chose to spend its time on with what it chose to ignore. “What you’re hearing them talking about is the office of the Secretary General and the dispute between who don’t want and who wants the Secretary General. But they’ve all taken individual positions as regional leaders, instead of taking a collective position [on the TCN deportees] and to discuss the matter collectively.”

The comparison was pointed. CARICOM found the institutional bandwidth to refer a dispute over the reappointment of Secretary-General Dr. Carla Barnett to the Caribbean Court of Justice for an advisory opinion — marshalling the full diplomatic and legal machinery of CARICOM to resolve an internal governance question. But on the matter of the United States pressuring multiple Caribbean nations to accept deportees described by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “the most despicable human beings... perverts, pedophiles and child rapists,” CARICOM produced nothing.

“A Group of Arrogant Leaders”

MP Walker did not confine his criticism to the process. He challenged the character of the leadership itself.

“We have a group of arrogant leaders who are leading this Caribbean that are not about people, but about themselves, and the Caribbean ain’t gonna benefit with this crop of leaders,” he said.

The charge of arrogance — levelled not at any single prime minister but at the collective regional leadership class — spoke to MP Walker’s core frustration: that the insularity and ego of individual Caribbean heads of government has overridden the collective interest of the populations they serve. Each leader, MP Walker suggested, preferred to be seen negotiating individually with Washington — projecting an image of sovereignty and toughness — rather than surrendering that individual spotlight to a unified Caribbean/CARICOM position that might actually have carried weight.

The OECS Problem that Unity could have Addressed

MP Walker connected the failure of collective action to a specific and alarming gap in the white paper — the borderless nature of the OECS. Under freedom of movement provisions, individuals with legal status in one OECS member state can travel freely across the sub-region.

“When — not if — when Antigua and Barbuda finalises this arrangement, and we would have had gotten some of these deportees, are they free to move around the Caribbean?” MP Walker asked. “Are they free to travel from Antigua and Barbuda to Montserrat? Do they have that legal status to go to St. Kitts and Nevis if they want?”

A unified Caribbean position could have addressed this question before any individual country signed anything — establishing common standards for the legal status, movement restrictions, and monitoring of deportees across the region. Instead, each country is making its own arrangements with Washington, with no coordination on what happens when individuals move between territories that share open borders.

The Browne Contradiction

MP Walker noted that the Prime Minister himself has called for regional unity on the issue — while simultaneously negotiating alone.

“And then you are hearing the Prime Minister like a sour grape in his interviews that the region should have been acting as one,” MP Walker said — pointing to the contradiction of a leader who publicly laments the absence of collective action while making no visible effort to lead or insist upon it at the CARICOM table.

The Prime Minister chairs the OECS Authority. He attended the CARICOM Heads of Government meeting. He had the platform, the position, and the relationships to push for a unified Caribbean stance. He did not.

What Unity could have Looked Like

MP Walker did not simply criticise. He outlined what a collective approach should have produced. “My advice would be, for the CARICOM region, whether the OECS or the wider CARICOM, to look at some sort of unified position to see how we would be able to confront the situation, given the seriousness of it,” he said.

A unified position could have established common vetting standards across all Caribbean nations, preventing the US from exploiting differences in screening rigour between countries. It could have set a collective cap on numbers, rather than allowing Washington to negotiate individual quotas. It could have addressed the freedom of movement question before deportees arrive rather than after. And it could have presented the United States with a single Caribbean interlocutor rather than a dozen separate, powerless ones.

None of that happened. And now, as MP Walker told the House, each small island state sits alone across the table from the most powerful nation on earth — without cards, without the box the cards came in, and without the collective strength that might have given them something to play.