U.S. deportations to Haiti must be stopped

Seven-hundred thousand Haitians are still living in come-by-chance camps, under tents or tarps, because their homes were destroyed in an earthquake 15 months ago. Conditions in these camps are so terrible — no security, no electricity, poor water, minimal sanitation — that at least 200,000 people have moved back to their old communities to houses teetering on the edge of collapse. (International Organization for Migration report, March 16)

While the cholera epidemic has subsided a bit, the coming rainy season is likely to produce an upsurge in cases and deaths from the infection, given the dearth of sanitation in Haiti.

Most Haitians survive on less than $2 a day; less than one-third have a formal job. Still, the prices for food and water in Haitian cities are comparable to prices in the rest of the world.

This is the environment into which Immigration and Customs Enforcement began deporting Haitian U.S. residents convicted of a crime or deemed a “national security threat” on Jan. 29. Twenty-six Haitians were sent back to Haiti then, and another 19 were sent on April 15. (Associated Press, April 15)

Frequently, authorities in Haiti hold deportees with criminal records in jail. Wildrick Guerrier, who was convicted in Florida of fighting with a cop and firearm possession, spent eight days in jail after he was sent back in the first batch of deportees. He was released to family members after he developed cholera symptoms. Claudine Magloire, his fiancée, talked to him a few hours before he died in a bathroom: “He said, ‘I don’t have the vomiting and the diarrhea, but I still feel pain under my chest.’” (Miami Herald, Feb. 3)

Marleine Bastien, executive director of Haitian Women of Miami, deplored Guerrier’s death. “We believe that any deportation now can result not only in the death of the deportee, but can contribute to the instability that reigns in Haiti.” (Miami Herald, Feb. 3)