Stop deportation of 30,000 Haitians!

The International Action Center is distributing a petition to stop the racist U.S. policy of illegally targeting 30,000 Haitian refugees for deportation. These refugees, being held indefinitely in detention centers, came to the U.S. to escape the extreme poverty in their homeland, exacerbated by recent hurricanes and rooted in hundreds of years of French and U.S. imperialist exploitation. Below are excerpts from the petition, which is addressed to the Obama administration, Department of Homeland Security and others. Go to the iacenter.org Web site to read the entire petition and sign and distribute it.

The Department of Homeland Security has singled out 30,000 Haitians living in this country to be deported to the famine, disease and homelessness currently raging in Haiti.

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

The temporary protected status must be restored for these 30,000 Haitians and they must be released from detention and house arrest immediately.

Haiti’s National Coordination of Food Supply (CNSA) estimates 3 million Haitians out of 8 million chronically eat less than they need to maintain themselves.

People not only need food, they also need homes. The bishop of Cap Haitien says that over 10,000 buildings, which sheltered 165,337 families in his diocese, have been destroyed.

The Haitian government has refused to issue travel documents because it cannot handle a massive influx of 30,000 people when its economy is in complete shambles. In response, ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is threatening to keep Haitians under indefinite detention.

Almost all the people that ICE targets are people of color but many Haitian activists feel that they have been singled out because they resist the wishes of the United States.

Many other citizens of countries like Nicaragua and Honduras living in the U.S. have received “temporary protected status” after natural disasters. Haitians should be released from detention and granted the same relief.