The warning has been reissued after the arrest of another American tourist.
The U.S. State Department has reissued a 2023 travel warning imploring Americans visiting Turks and Caicos to check their luggage for stray ammunition before departing, after a third American tourist in as many months has been detained in the Caribbean island nation for running afoul of the law.
A 30-year-old Virginia man was detained and arrested at the Turks and Caicos cruise port after a routine check of his luggage found stray bullets. He was charged on April 3 with violating the country’s weapons laws, which prohibit individual possession of firearms, ammunition, or other weapons. Violation of the law carries a minimum sentence of 12 years in prison.
The warning also reminds travelers that inadvertent mistakes are not grounds for dismissal or a lighter sentence, after an Oklahoma couple detained earlier this month pointed out they had made it through the security checkpoint at Oklahoma City’s Will Rogers World Airport without being stopped or questioned.
“We wish to remind all travelers that declaring a weapon in your luggage with an airline carrier does not grant permission to bring the weapon into the Turks and Caicos Islands and will result in your arrest. TSA screening in the United States may not identify ammunition in your baggage; it is your responsibility to ensure your baggage is free of ammunition and/or firearms,” reads the announcement, issued by the U.S Embassy in Nassau, The Bahamas, which is the nearest office providing consular services to U.S. citizens in Turks and Caicos.
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The warning further advises that the U.S. Embassy is unable to secure the release of U.S. citizens who bring firearms or ammunition into Turks and Caicos—even inadvertently. In such cases, consular officials can help American citizens find local legal representation, but their resources are otherwise limited.
The pair of arrests come just months after the country’s appellate court affirmed the minimum sentence for weapons offenses, and admonished judges for misinterpreting a clause in the law allowing for lighter sentences for exceptional circumstances. Judges in those cases had imposed reduced fines and no jail time, but the appeals court ruled that in those cases the courts did not have the authority to reduce the sentence to less than a prison sentence.
The country’s weapons law was passed in 2022 to help quell an uptick in gang-related violent crime, mostly perpetrated by foreign organized crime groups. At the time, the country offered a brief amnesty for illegal firearms to be turned into the local police station. Since the law was passed, there have been eight charges against Americans under the law, and three Americans are currently held in the country on bail awaiting their cases to be heard by the legal system. The Oklahoma man charged with ammunition possession has been able to secure a conditional release awaiting his next hearing, but has had to surrender his passport and promise not to leave the country.
Turks and Caicos is a largely self-governing overseas territory of the United Kingdom. Its economy is tourism-dependent, with offshore banking and fishing also playing a small part. Many U.S. visitors arrive in the territory via cruise ship to the small island of Grand Turk. The majority of the large resorts are in or near Providenciales, on Northwest Caicos. In addition to the updated warnings about entering the country with weapons or ammunition, the U.S. State Department rates the country Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution in its hierarchy of Travel Advisory Levels, due to crime in Providenciales.
A report by the British Foreign Office in late 2023 reports that the islands were “engulfed in extreme violence [in 2022] amid a turf war for control of drug trafficking routes”, and noted that police tracking of crime reports was lacking, and that a number of informants had been killed by gangs soon after reporting information to police stations. The report pointed to the territory’s struggles to secure its borders from gang members arriving illegally by sea.
The 2022 firearm law was a direct response to this increase in homicides. Laws banning firearm possession for island residents have long been in effect, but the 2022 law imposed minimum sentences and disallowed the ability of courts to make exceptions as they had previously done for non-residents. The reason for this change was that one of the gang factions involved is a Jamaican organized crime syndicate attempting to remove all criminal competition from Turks and Caicos.
The UK government that year also sent maritime surveillance support including military aircraft and helicopters.