St James police said they are monitoring the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention of dancehall artiste Andre ‘Squash’ Whittaker, as it may have security implications for the already troublesome western division, which is currently under a state of public emergency (SOE).
US law enforcement agents arrested Squash close to two weeks ago in Florida. Squash is an influential Deejay who is associated with the MoBay-based G-City Gang.
According to the police, checks made with their overseas partners indicated that up to Monday, May 29, 2023, the artiste was in detention at the Krome North Service Processing Center in Florida. Authorities there held him on immigration-related offenses after he overstayed a work petition.
Squash was reportedly first granted permission to perform for free in the US in 2019. However, there has been no record of him returning to Jamaica since.
Florida’s Governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, recently signed a Senate bill to clamp down on illegal immigration.
In the meantime, Superintendent of Police Eron Samuels, who oversees operations in St James, said that the police know the entertainer’s latest run-in with US law enforcement.
“We are monitoring the situation. However, I will have to speak to my crime officer to determine that status of investigations impacting Andre ‘Squash’ Whittaker,” he said.
Superintendent Eron Samuels
From Salt Spring in the parish, Squash is no stranger to detention. Local law enforcement officers detained him in August 2018 under a St James SOE. He was held for five months without charge before being released in January 2019. He later left the country to perform in the US.
Since then, Florida authorities named the deejay in court documents for his affiliation with a double murder. Additionally, US investigators connected the incident to an ongoing Lauderhill, Florida gang war to have originated in St James.