U.S. threatens to expel 30,000 Haitians

The U.S. government is threatening to expel 30,000 Haitians living inside its borders. Among the millions of undocumented workers in the U.S. who live each day with the fearful possibility of deportation, the Department of Homeland Security has made undocumented Haitians a special focus.

From September to December Haitians had “temporary protected status,” which allowed them to stay after four hurricanes washed away houses, bridges, roads, crops and the land on which the crops were growing.

Now, according to Nicole Navas, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman, the 10,000 U.N. “peacekeepers” currently occupying Haiti can guarantee the safety of the returnees. (BBC Monitoring, Feb. 17) At the same time, the U.S. State Department has put Haiti under a “travel advisory” and warns U.S. citizens not to go there.

Randolph McGrorty, executive director of Catholic Legal Services, Archdiocese of Miami, said this decision of Homeland Security “shocks the conscience.” He went on, “Deportations at this time are simply inhumane, sending people to conditions of famine and disease.”

According to Haiti AlterPress (Feb. 28), Haiti’s National Coordination of Food Supply (CNSA) estimates 3 million out of 8 million Haitians don’t get enough to eat. The drought that hit Haiti after the hurricanes will cut into the next harvest, so this number will increase.

People not only need food. They also need homes. The bishop of Cap Haitian in the northern part of Haiti told zenit.org that over 10,000 buildings, which sheltered 165,337 families in his diocese, had been destroyed. (Feb. 25)

Figures of destroyed houses for the rest of Haiti have not been reported in the press. But Google Earth shows that in Gonaïves, which used to be Haiti’s second largest city, mudflats have replaced the communities that stretched along the waterfront. These communities were more thoroughly devastated than was the Lower Ninth in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina. Every single building in Gonaïves was damaged and over 500 people there lost their lives. Over a 1,000 died in all of Haiti.

The Haitian government has refused to issue travel documents to the some 600 Haitians currently packed into U.S. detention centers and 300 or so under house arrest with electronic bracelets. Its position is that it cannot handle a massive influx of 30,000 people when the Haitian economy is in complete shambles. This decision has caused some grumbling from ICE, which threatens to keep Haitians under indefinite detention if they don’t get the necessary documents.

ICE managed to deport 1,024 Haitians in 2008, but now they are using threats of indefinite detention to get large numbers of Haitians to leave voluntarily. Yet this year alone, over 700 Haitians have been stopped on the high seas by the U.S. Coast Guard—men, women and children fleeing Haiti because they couldn’t find work to feed and shelter themselves and their families.

Almost all the people that ICE targets are people of color, yet many Haitian activists feel that they have been especially singled out because as a people Haitians have and are resisting the dictates of U.S. imperialism. For example, they elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president in 1990 over the U.S. favorite, Marc Bazin. A U.S.-backed military coup drove Aristide into exile on Sept. 30, 1991. He came back and in 2000 was elected president with 92 percent of the vote.

Another U.S. organized coup-kidnapping sent Aristide into exile again in 2004, but he still has tremendous support in Haiti. Even in protests demanding food and housing, Haitians raise the issue of his return.

Joseph Desmaret, a Haitian activist from Spring Valley, N.Y., told Haïti-Liberté: “We are determined to stop this [massive deportation of Haitians]. ... If we must leave for Washington, we will mobilize our resources and we will go to march in Washington for justice for these people.” (Feb 25-March 3)