Stop criminalizing Haitians

News of the detention of Haitian earthquake survivors in prison-like detention facilities in the U.S. have exposed, once again, just how little the U.S. relief effort in Haiti is about actual relief for the suffering Haitian people.

At least 65 Haitians have been imprisoned throughout the U.S. after arriving here following the Jan. 12 earthquake. Some 30 of them were put on planes by U.S. Marines. These detainees have received little-to-no mental health care, according to the New York Times, “despite an offer of free treatment at [one] jail by a local Creole-speaking psychotherapist.” (March 31) Only Haitians who were in the U.S. before the earthquake have been granted temporary protected status.

The Times reported that one young man, 20-year-old Jackson, who, in his request for release from detention, “describes how even the sound of someone on the jail stairs makes him fear another earthquake and worry that because he is locked up, he will be unable to escape.” Meanwhile, his 25-year-old brother, Reagan, has inexplicably been moved to three different prisons in the past two months.

Such abuse is part of a racist policy that sees Black people as criminals and immigrants as illegal — whether they’re fleeing devastating U.S.-imposed economic policies, the effects of a natural disaster or, as is often the case, a country that has endured the effects of both. The policy is used to increase the numbers — and therefore the profit — in privately run detention centers.

It’s another reason why Haitians deserve full reparations for the legacy of slavery as well as the current-day imperialist plunder of the country. The Haitian people deserve every right to determine their own future.

It’s also why we should all be in the streets throughout the U.S. on May Day, May 1, to demand full immigrant and worker rights.