Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Officials want Biden to deal with Haitian migrant issue
Most turned away under COVID immigration policy
It’s a common sight on the shores of South Florida.
Hundreds of Haitians aboard a homemade boat, risking their lives for days on uncertain seas to leave behind the turmoil in their country, try to make it to safer land.
There’s been a recent influx of Haitians making the treacherous trip to Florida. On Saturday, U.S. Coast Guard officials stopped 189 Haitian migrants, including children, at sea. Last Monday, 140 Haitians migrants landed in Summerland Key. And since Oct. 1, 2021, Coast Guard officials said they have interdicted 1,577 Haitian migrants.
What they are sent back to in Haiti is political instability in the wake of President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination, gang violence and a suffering economy.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, the first Haitian-American Democrat elected to Congress, joined other officials and Haitian advocates Monday to urge the Biden administration to rescind the federal policy that allows for the expulsion of immigrants due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The policy, called Title 42, has been in effect for two years.
Cherfilus-McCormick met with about 150 Haitian detainees at the Broward Transitional Center. They shared their experiences at the center of finding cockroaches and worms in their food, she said at the conference, and of confusion about the immigration process.
They felt they are treated as “prisoners” rather than people seeking a life better than the ones they have in Haiti, she said. Many have been expelled under Title 42, and many others were waiting to be deported.
The assassination of the Haitian president and the attempted assassination of the current Prime Minister Ariel Henry have been an impetus for many of them leaving, Cherfilus-McCormick said. They are afraid that if they leave their homes, they may be kidnapped, she said, and they fear gangs who control the streets.
Kidnappings in Haiti have increased by 180% in the past year, the Associated Press reported, and over 16,000 people since mid-2021 have been displaced because of gang violence.
“So we see the terror that’s going on in Haiti is a terror that’s similar to what we see in other areas and other countries that are being granted asylum,” Cherfilus-McCormick said. “But yet the Haitian community is still being denied asylum under these circumstances.”
Haitians seeking refuge are not being given due process, she said. Interviews for them to express what is called credible fear
for them to be granted eligibility for asylum are not happening, she said.
Over 210 deportation flights with Haitian immigrants aboard have left from the United States, without ensuring they received due process, Cherfilus-McCormick said.
Tessa Petit, co-executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, said 22,000 Haitians have been deported in the last year under Title 42.
On March 4, a federal appeals court in D.C. issued a ruling that said immigrants cannot be expelled under Title 42 if they will be expelled to “places where they will be persecuted or tortured.”
“A couple of weeks ago, a court in D.C. gave the Biden administration the opportunity to repeal Title 42. They did not,”
Petit said. “The United States has been a welcoming nation for immigrants. The United States is supposed to be the land of the dreams. But that is not what we’re seeing now.”
“Lack of due process” is what Haitians are seeing now, Petit said.
“The 10 years prior to the Biden administration never saw such a high number of Haitians being deported,” she said.
North Miami Councilwoman Mary Estimé-Irvin cited a March 11 memo from the Department of Homeland Security that said Ukrainians may be excluded from expulsion under Title 42 due to the ongoing war.
“Why is that same privilege not given to brown and Black people, but today we’re especially talking about the Haitian community,” she said.