Haitian Deportation--September 2021
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| Deportation Plane--Cap Haitien, September 24, 2021 (Photo by John Carroll) |
In mid-September, 15 thousand people, with most of them being Haitian, had amassed at our border in Del Rio, Texas. And this story captured the news wire and social media. Del Rio has 35,000 people and this large group of migrants was very intimidating not only to Del Rio but to many others in the United States.
I was frequently asked where this large group of people came from. People wanted to know how did the Haitians make it from Haiti to our southern border? These Haitians had been in South America for many years where they had been living and working since the epic Haitian earthquake in 2010. After the devastating earthquake, Haitians arrived in Brazil, attracted by a building boom partly in connection with Brazil hosting the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. However, due to racial discrimination and loss of jobs in places such as Chile and Brazil, many Haitians have left--walking and riding between 4,500 and 7,000 perilous miles to our border in hopes of finding new lives. (However, for years now, even extending back into the Obama years, there have been Haitians at our southern border. Just not so many and in one spot.)
I think another reason they were in Del Rio is that they had heard that Temporary Protected Status (TPS) had been extended by the Biden Administration in May and even though it would not cover them if they entered the United States, many people thought it worth a try. During the last two months, Haiti has exploded into even more unrest than usual with the assassination of its President in early July, followed by the massive earthquake and Tropical Storm Grace in August which destroyed much of the south and made life very difficult for almost 1 million people. Kidnapping and gang activity in many cities in Haiti have made Haiti all the more insecure. Possibly with these challenges, Haitians who had been in South America thought that that the US may open its borders and allow them to apply for asylum.
So the big question several weeks ago was what to do with thousands of people living in dire conditions under the bridge on our border.
As we know, Trump had done all in his power to stop migrants from coming to this country--especially from Haiti and Central America. Kids were placed in cages at the border to discourage people from coming. And Trump began using a public health rule from 1944 called Title 42.
Theconverstion.com explains--
"As part of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the asylum system, the White House in March 2020 ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over the objections of its own scientists, to use a 1944 public health law known as “Title 42” to bar asylum seekers from entering the United States. This law had never been used before to dictate the movement of people across U.S. borders, which is instead the province of immigration laws."
"Even before COVID-19 struck, Trump administration aide Stephen Miller had inquired about using the government’s public health authority to shut U.S. borders to people seeking asylum. He was told there was no legal authority to do so. The emergence of the pandemic provided a pretext for the unprecedented use of this little-known law dating back over 75 years. It formed part of the Public Health Service Act of 1944 to allow for the quarantine of anyone, including a U.S. citizen, arriving from a foreign country. It was never intended, nor until 2020 was used, to expel noncitizens from the United States. In fact, when Congress enacted the initial version of this law, references to immigration were deliberately omitted precisely to avoid the use of its provisions to discriminate against immigrants.
But the March 2020 order by the Trump administration targets one group, and one group only: noncitizens who lack documentation and arrive by land.
All other people arriving in the U.S., including American citizens, lawful permanent residents and tourists arriving by plane or ship, are exempt. As currently employed by the government, this public health law has displaced existing immigration law, which allows people to request asylum. And in doing so it has also eliminated the due process protections that are part of our immigration laws.
On Sept. 16, a federal court found the use of Title 42 to expel people seeking asylum to be a clear violation of U.S. law and granted a preliminary injunction against the practice. The court stayed its own order for 14 days to allow the government an opportunity to appeal its decision."
"Both international and U.S. law recognize the basic human right to seek asylum. The U.S. has ratified two treaties, the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1984 Convention against Torture, which prohibit the U.S. from returning people to countries where they risk persecution or torture. As a practical matter, this means that people must be able to request asylum at the U.S. border or within U.S. territory so that they have the opportunity to prove whether or not they fit within the category of persons legally protected from forced return."
"This international legal framework has been codified in U.S. law, primarily through the Refugee Act of 1980, along with later statutes and regulations. It is universally acknowledged, including by the Supreme Court, that in passing these laws Congress intended to bring U.S. law into conformity with the United States’ international treaty obligations."
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So with the above context and explanation, what would Biden do with the Haitians under the bridge? Biden had campaigned on promises to put in place a more welcoming and humane immigration policy than his predecessor.
In 2015, I had seen up close and personal what happened on the Haitian-Dominican border when tens of thousands of people with Haitian blood were thrown out of the Dominican Republic. Would we do the same in the United States? Surely not.
However, two weeks ago today Biden began using the Trump era policy and started to rapidly deport thousands of Haitians on planes to Port au Prince and Cap Haitien. And today as I type this about 6,000 Haitians have been repatriated to Haiti using our planes.
Why did the Biden administration not give the thousands of deportees a chance to apply for asylum? What was the rush? Politics most likely and Biden's attempt to appease members of both parties.
While I was in Cap Haitien recently, I watched two planes land and saw the Haitian deportees get off the planes. They walked with a bounce in their step as they were pointed to a break in the fence surrounding the airport. They then entered a grassy field and walked to a tent set up by the International Organization of Migration where they were given a small package and then released into the streets of Cap Haitien. As I watched this I felt so bad for these individuals knowing what they must have endured on their long walk to the United States up through South and Central America. I knew how motivated they must have been to leave Haiti and then Brazil or Chile to end up in Del Rio. And now they have been sent back to Haiti which has no use for them and is on fire like never before.
PBS.org--
Three days after the deportations began, the US special envoy Daniel Foote, resigned in protest of this large forced repatriation of Haitian migrants to a homeland wracked by civil strife and natural disaster. Daniel Foote was appointed after the assassination of Haiti’s president. His letter of resignation reflects a deep concern for Washington’s disinterest in improving conditions in Haiti:
“I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs to daily life. Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my policy recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.”
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And about 12,000 people under the Del Rio bridge have been released in the United States with orders to meet in front of immigration judges to be processed for asylum. Haitians are the least likely from any country in Central America or the Caribbean to be granted asylum in the United States--about a 4% chance.
During his address to the United Nations General Assembly last week, Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry said inequality, poverty, and conflict will remain the main drivers of migration.
“Human beings, fathers and mothers who have children, are always going to flee poverty and conflict,” he said. “Migration will continue as long as the planet has both wealthy areas, whilst most of the world’s population lives in poverty, even extreme poverty, without any prospects of a better life.”
John A. Carroll, MD
www.haitianhearts.org
Addendum--
Forbes--October 3, 2021
Fauci was also asked about Title 42, the controversial public health law being used to expel migrants as a Covid-19 health measure, and said while he didn’t know enough about the “intricacies” of the policy to comment, “My feeling has always been that focusing on immigrants, expelling them...is not the solution to an outbreak.”
Republicans have repeatedly blamed immigrants for the U.S.’ Covid-19 surge rather than issues like a lack of mask mandates or lower vaccination rates, with officials like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis often pointing to the southern border to justify recent outbreaks in their states. Abbott issued an executive order in July that restricted the ground transportation of migrants into Texas because of the perceived Covid-19 risk, for instance, while DeSantis blamed President Joe Biden for “having a wide-open southern border” that could bring in the coronavirus. Fauci follows other medical experts who have similarly criticized those arguments, saying Republicans are “scapegoating” by blaming immigrants rather than imposing Covid-19 mitigation measures like mask mandates. “Is this a pandemic of the migrants? No, it's a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Dr. Iván Meléndez, the local health authority in Hidalgo County, Texas, said at a press conference in August. Despite this, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has kept Title 42 in effect after the Trump administration initially deployed the policy to justify expelling migrants during the Covid-19 pandemic, though the Biden administration did make an exception for unaccompanied minors. Title 42 allows the federal government to prohibit entry to the U.S. during public health emergencies and has been used by the Biden administration to expel thousands of migrants. The White House has defended Title 42 as it’s been challenged in court, with an appeals court most recently issuing a stay Thursday that means the policy can remain in place while the litigation plays out.
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Michael Posner--New York Times--October 4, 2021
Last month, the Biden administration announced that it had cleared a makeshift tent camp where thousands of Haitians had congregated under a bridge linking Mexico and Del Rio, Texas. They had arrived there desperate to gain admission to the United States, many fleeing persecution in Haiti and seeking the protection of our asylum law. The administration’s unsteady response to this crisis has revealed, once again, the broken nature of this country’s asylum system. It also is a grim reminder of the longstanding U.S. tolerance of government corruption and the denial of basic human rights in Haiti.
Since the adoption of the Refugee Act of 1980, those who arrive at our border or have already entered the country are entitled to seek asylum if they can demonstrate a “well-founded fear of persecution” based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social group. This law has roots in the Holocaust and U.S. commitments made after World War II to provide refuge to people fleeing persecution. But the asylum system has been hampered from the outset by political controversy and bureaucratic dysfunction.
Many of the Haitians who camped under the bridge in Del Rio had made multiyear journeys through Latin America and then to our southern border. Some were inspired to try to enter the United States now because of a misimpression that President Biden’s replacement of former President Donald Trump — and the Biden administration’s decision to extend temporary protected status to Haitians already in the country — signaled an opportunity for them to come here, too. Temporary protected status suspends deportations of Haitians already in the United States because of the current instability in their country. Like immigrants from around the world, these Haitians, including the many asylum seekers, are looking for a new home where they will find stability, better jobs and more security than their own country can offer.
The Haitian cases of the 1980s became a catalyst for broader reforms of the U.S. asylum system. Over four decades, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, our country developed a more humane asylum system that gave thousands of people who met the “well-founded fears of persecution” standard their day in court. These reforms were slow in coming and often imperfect, but they represented a good-faith effort by the federal government to abide by the spirit of the U.N. Refugee Convention, whose provisions the United States adopted when it ratified the U.N. Refugee Protocol in 1968.
When Donald Trump took office, he broke with this bipartisan history and sought to blow up the asylum system entirely, obliterating U.S. policy and principle as they apply to those who seek asylum from within America and to refugees, who seek similar legal protections while still abroad.
Among other draconian measures, Mr. Trump reversed the decades-old policy of allowing those who appear at the border with a credible fear of persecution the right to enter the United States to make their formal asylum claim. As they did in so many other areas, the Trump team also decimated the administrative capacity of the U.S. government to process asylum claims or resettle refugees brought here from overseas. When the Biden administration assumed office in January, it inherited a dysfunctional system made worse by Republican obstruction and shamelessness that continues to this day.
The plight of the Haitians has been further complicated by decades of misrule, corruption and brutality by a series of Haitian governments that received steady U.S. financial and political support despite egregious records on human rights. For far too long, Washington has sought to perpetuate the status quo in Haiti in the name of short-term stability. When I visited Haiti in 2013 as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, every one of the human rights activists I met there echoed this theme. Rather than promoting democracy and human rights, successive U.S. administrations had actually emboldened corrupt government leaders, exacerbating the problem.
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Doctors Without Borders in Haiti had this to say about returning Haitians--
Last week, the United States Department of Homeland Security said it would be repatriating Haitian migrants who have gathered on the U.S.-Mexico border in Del Rio, Texas. Approximately 12,000 migrants and asylum seekers—most of them Haitian—are living in makeshift camps under the international bridge, with limited access to food, water, and shelter. The US is accelerating deportation flights to Haiti while the country is in the midst of a political and social crisis, as rising insecurity and armed conflict force thousands of people to flee their homes in the capital Port-au-Prince.
Migrants in Del Rio are being expelled to Haiti under the authority of Title 42, a harmful policy that exploits the pandemic as a way to effectively shut down asylum. Since the public order was issued in March 2020, the United States has carried out over one million expulsions.
MSF and multiple immigration and human rights organizations have repeatedly called for the immediate end to this dangerous, harmful US policy.
The United States government should suspend its expulsion flights to Haiti on humanitarian grounds. The insecurity that we see today in Port-au-Prince is the worst we have seen in decades. Armed groups have effectively taken over large areas of the capital and their attacks have forced thousands of people to flee their homes. More than half of the patients arriving at our Tabarre hospital in Port-au-Prince have suffered life-threatening gunshot wounds, often from high-powered firearms that have proliferated across the city. Armed clashes in two neighborhoods, Martissant and Cité Soleil, forced us to move longstanding medical programs to other areas of Port-au-Prince this year. Many people who have fled the violence are living in camps within the city in appalling conditions.
It is unconscionable to return migrants against their will to a situation of uncertainty and mortal danger. On top of this, Haiti's southern region was hit by an earthquake less than six weeks ago, damaging and overwhelming an already overburdened health system. When people are seeking safety in the US, putting them onto planes and forcing them into this context is beyond inhumane.
—Avril Benoît, executive director of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières-USA.
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TIME--October 4, 2021
IOM will provide about $100 to pay for migrants to travel to their Haitian home, if it is still standing, according to Lubin. Many of the migrants deported by the U.S. in the last two weeks have not lived in Haiti for years. Many originally migrated to Brazil and Chile, among other countries, before attempting this year to cross the border into the U.S.
Mayorkas announced the $5.5 million from USAID the same day that he confirmed that Border Patrol had cleared a migrant camp populated mostly with Haitian nationals that had formed under an international bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Most of the thousands of people living there have already been expelled or deported to Haiti, according to The Washington Post.
Democrats have criticized the Biden Administration’s embrace of a Trump-era health measure called Title 42, which allows the government to “expel” anyone who attempts to cross the U.S. border—even if they are hoping to claim asylum. State Department official Harold Koh resigned from his post and issued a memo, dated Oct. 2 and obtained by POLITICO, criticizing the Administration’s use of Title 42, particularly against Haitians.
“Simply put, Haiti is a humanitarian nightmare,” Koh writes. “But if Haiti is undeniably a humanitarian disaster area, the question should be: at this moment, why is this Administration returning Haitians at all?”
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'The Greatest Heist In History': How Haiti Was Forced To Pay Reparations For Freedom
In recent weeks, thousands of refugees from Haiti have arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border, desperate for a better life. Most left Haiti years ago, after a 2010 earthquake ravaged what was already one of the most dismal economies in the world. They had originally settled in places like Chile, but the politics of the region have made them feel unwelcome, discriminated against, and fearful of the future.
The Haitian refugees hoped the United States, under President Biden, would offer them a lifeline. They were wrong. The Biden administration has been sending thousands back to Haiti, even though Haiti is a disaster zone, and many of the refugees fled it years ago. Some of those the U.S. government forcibly sent to Haiti are kids who have never lived there.
Ambassador Daniel Foote, who was appointed by President Biden as the U.S. special envoy to Haiti in July, resigned in protest against his administration's policy. "I will not be associated with the United States' inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees," Foote wrote in his resignation letter.
The Haiti that refugees are being sent back to is a nation in crisis. With its unlucky coordinates on the map and its poor infrastructure, Haiti has been devastated by multiple hurricanes and earthquakes in recent years, including a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in August. In July, Haiti's president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated by Colombian mercenaries, some of whom had received U.S. military training. A Florida-based security company reportedly connected whoever wanted Moïse killed with the mercenaries, but the details of why Moïse was killed and who directed the mercenaries are still murky.
What is clear, however, is that Moïse's assassination continues Haiti's centuries-long political instability. In 2015, the World Bank concluded that Haiti's biggest political problem is that "a social contract is missing between the state and its citizens." Ambassador Foote, in his resignation letter, blasted the United States and other nations for contributing to this problem for the umpteenth time by unabashedly backing Moïse's unelected replacement, Ariel Henry. Henry was appointed Prime Minister by Moïse in July, and took on the additional role of President after Moïse's assassination. Haiti's chief prosecutor said he found evidence linking Henry to the president's killing, and Henry promptly fired him. Some Haitian authorities have asked Henry to step down and pleaded with the international community to stop supporting him. "This cycle of international political interventions in Haiti has consistently produced catastrophic results," Foote wrote.
Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the world, and rich countries have their fingerprints all over the nation's stunted development. The United States worked to isolate a newly independent Haiti during the early 19th century and violently occupied the island nation for 19 years in the early 20th century. While the U.S. officially left Haiti in 1934, it continued to control Haiti's public finances until 1947, siphoning away around 40% of Haiti's national income to service debt repayments to the U.S. and France.
Much of this debt to France was the legacy of what the University of Virginia scholar Marlene Daut calls "the greatest heist in history": surrounded by French gunboats, a newly independent Haiti was forced to pay its slaveholders reparations. You read that correctly. It was the former slaves of Haiti, not the French slaveholders, who were forced to pay reparations. Haitians compensated their oppressors and their oppressors' descendants for the privilege of being free. It took Haiti more than a century to pay the reparation debts off.
The Tragic Hope of Revolutionary Haiti
Haiti won its independence from France in 1804, and it was almost immediately made a pariah state by world powers. It was an independent, black-led nation — created by slaves who had cast aside their chains and fought their oppressors for their freedom — during a time when white-led nations were enforcing brutal, racist systems of exploitation around the world.
Haiti, then known as Saint-Domingue, had been the crown jewel of the French empire. It was the most lucrative colony in the whole world. French planters forced African slaves to produce sugar, coffee, and other cash crops for the global market. The system seemed to work well. That is, until the French and American revolutions helped to inspire, in 1791, what became the world's largest and most successful slave revolt. Against all odds, the slaves won. Former slaves sent slaveholders scurrying to France and America — and Haitians successfully fought back subsequent efforts to re-enslave them. Haiti was the first nation to permanently ban slavery.
But as a nation of freed black slaves, Haiti was a threat to the existing world order. President Thomas Jefferson worked to isolate Haiti diplomatically and strangle it economically, fearing that the success of Haiti would inspire slave revolts back home. With the invention and spread of the cotton gin, slavery was becoming much more lucrative at the very same time a free Haiti was coming into existence, and slaveholders in the United States and other countries clung to and expanded the inhumane means of production. Haitian success was perceived as a threat to this system for decades, and the United States didn't officially recognize Haiti until 1862, as slavery began being abolished.
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During Haiti's critical period of development, France intervened even more directly than the U.S. to thwart its success. In July 1825, the French King, Charles X, sent an armed flotilla of warships to Haiti with the message that the young nation would have to pay France 150 million francs to secure its independence, or suffer the consequences. That sum was 10 times the amount the United States had paid France in the Louisiana Purchase, which had doubled the size of the U.S.
Almost literally at gunpoint, Haiti caved to France's demands in order to secure its independence. The amount was too much for the young nation to pay outright, and so it had to take out loans with hefty interest rates from a French bank. Over the next century, Haiti paid French slaveholders and their descendants the equivalent of between $20 and $30 billion in today's dollars. It took Haiti 122 years to pay it off. Professor Marlene Daut writes it "severely damaged the newly independent country's ability to prosper."
Righting The Wrongs
After the 2010 earthquake completely devastated Haiti, scholars and journalists wrote a letter to the French president demanding that France pay back Haiti. The French economist Thomas Piketty resurrected the idea in 2020, arguing that France owes Haiti at least $28 billion. The French government, under multiple presidents, has balked at the idea, and it is unlikely to pay Haiti back anytime soon.
But if the rich world wants to help right the wrongs done to Haiti in the past, perhaps the most effective policy right now would be to accept more Haitian refugees. This wouldn't only be a humane policy that would improve their and their future families' lives. It would also likely be a boost to the Haitian economy. According to the World Bank, Haitian expatriates sent $3 billion in remittances back home to Haiti in 2018, which was almost one-third of the island nation's entire GDP.
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Al Jazeera--October 7, 2021
At the congressional briefing, Foote criticized US support for the prime minister, calling on Washington to back civil society groups in Haiti to reach a political settlement.
Foote also said he does not believe Henry's government would survive without US support.
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