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U.S. resumes deportations to Haiti
BY TRENTON DANIEL
Dec. 9, 2008
U.S. immigration authorities have resumed deportations to Haiti, ending a three-month-plus reprieve of sending Haitians back to their storm-battered country.
"We determined that it was appropriate to resume based on the circumstances in Haiti," Nicole Navas, a spokeswoman with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said, declining to comment further.
"The individuals being returned have final orders of removal and the necessary travel documents."
The move to deport Haitians comes at a time when Haiti is still trying to recover from back-to-back storms that heaped wide scale devastation. The tempests -- two of them full-fledged hurricanes -- left at least 800 people dead, tens of thousands homeless, and caused about $1 billion in damages.
Aside from the clearing of roads, little has improved in Haiti.
"The decision to resume deportations to Haiti shocks the conscience," said Randolph McGrorty, executive director of Catholic Legal Services, Archdiocese of Miami. "Deportations at this time are simply inhumane, sending people to conditions of famine and disease. The change in policy is unwarranted by reports on the ground which confirm that the humanitarian crisis in Haiti continues and worsens."
McGrorty added: "It is incomprehensibly counter-productive to the U.S. government's objective of avoiding mass migration, and so cruel and misguided that I cannot explain it by any other way than to condemn the policy as racist."
Immigrant advocates found hope in the suspension, issued in September. They said the halt could pave the way for temporary protected status, or TPS, a program that temporarily suspends deportations and allows undocumented Haitians to obtain work permits.
Immigrant advocates expressed further relief when authorities allowed more than 50 Haitians to be released from a Broward detention center. Ankle bracelets were used to monitor their whereabouts, they said.
But on Monday, immigration attorneys and Haitian authorities expressed frustration with the resumed deportations. Lawyer Randolph McGrorty sent out an urgent e-mail.
"It's an outrageously inhumane act," said Cheryl Little, executive director of Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami. "We are attempting to do whatever we can to convince [U.S.] government officials to change their minds on this."
In an e-mail from the Department of Homeland Security requesting travel documents for 43 noncriminal Haitians, Haitian Consul General Ralph Latorture found out about the resumed deportations.
"We still have thousands of cubic meters of mud being removed from Gonaives," Latortue said about the hard-hit seaport of Gonaives. "There are still people in shelters, and of course people know children are suffering from malnutrition in Haiti. These are all circumstances that put the country in a difficult position struggling to recover."
Even before this fall's halting, Latortue and other Consuls General had stopped issuing travel documents. On Monday, he said he wasn't sure how his government would handle the response.
It was also not clear on Monday when the first flights would start carrying Haitian nationals back to their homeland.
ICE spokeswoman Navas declined to say, citing security reasons.
Miami Herald staff writer Jacqueline Charles contributed to this report.
View the article at: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/805170.html
