Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United States, Audrey Marks.
KINGSTON, Jamaica--Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United States, Audrey Marks, has firmly defended a newly signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the U.S. government, seeking to quell rising public anxiety regarding the temporary transit of foreign nationals through local territory.
Speaking at a corporate consultation hosted by the Institute for Workforce Education and Development (IWED) at the Terra Nova All-Suite Hotel in Kingston, Marks emphasized that the bilateral framework contains ironclad protections designed to safeguard Jamaica’s domestic security.
The agreement establishes a highly regulated, federally funded protocol allowing Third Country Nationals (TCNs) who have been detained or processed for repatriation by United States authorities to transit through Jamaica en route to their final destinations.
Under the strict terms of the newly minted MoU, the physical intake of transiting individuals is strictly limited to a maximum of 25 persons within any given two-week window. Furthermore, individual stays on Jamaican soil are engineered to be brief, averaging approximately seven days, with an absolute maximum allowable stay capped at 14 days.
Addressing widespread public speculation that the island could inadvertently become a holding ground for deportees with severe criminal backgrounds, Ambassador Marks categorized those assertions as entirely inconsistent with the factual parameters of the deal.
She stated unequivocally that the administration has established a non-negotiable threshold that bars any individual with known criminal convictions from entering the country under the TCN transit program.
"While the MoU has been signed, its full operationalization is not yet complete, so the full information on how it will work is still being worked out," Marks explained to the gathered business and civic leaders. "But what is non-negotiable is that Jamaica is not and would not accept criminal persons."
The Ambassador argued that it would be fundamentally counterintuitive for the government to enter into an arrangement that compromises internal law enforcement at a moment when national security agencies are reporting historic, long-term gains in public safety.
According to official data provided by the Ministry of National Security and Peace, Jamaica recorded 674 homicides at the close of 2025, marking the first time in more than 32 years that the annual murder toll fell below the 700-person threshold.
This downward trajectory has sustained itself into the current calendar year. Mid-year law enforcement data as of June 29, 2026, indicates that murders nationwide have dropped by an additional 23 percent compared to the corresponding period last year, positioning the country for one of its safest periods in modern history.
Marks maintained that a government actively working to fortify border security and protect vulnerable communities would never deliberately undermine its own domestic achievements. The diplomat concluded her address by reiterating that the TCN arrangement must be viewed strictly as a limited, highly controlled logistical protocol rather than an open-ended immigration or resettlement program.
Government agencies are expected to finalize the operational frameworks over the coming weeks before the first transit cohort is authorized to pass through the island’s ports of entry.
