PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti — The deportation of Haitians to their home country from the US has been resumed, despite the post-Hurricane Matthew recovery situation and the more recent floods in Haiti.
Inspector Gary Desrosiers, deputy spokesman of the National Police of Haiti (PNH) in charge of welcoming the deportees on their return to Haiti, confirmed the resumption of such flights. The first flight arrived last Thursday in Port-au-Prince with 30 Haitians on board and another flight arrived on Tuesday of this week with 40 other deportees.
Desrosiers said the Haitians were subject to removal proceedings after illegally entering the US and subsequently jailed, HaitiLibre reported.
Pierre Espérance, the executive director of the National Network for the Defence of Human Rights (RNDDH), noted, “These are not deported criminals, but people who went to Brazil and crossed from Mexico to San Diego, California.”
Describing the resumption of these deportations as unacceptable, he added, “…the US Government did not show solidarity with Haiti… the country is in an extremely complicated situation. You have a hurricane, continuous floods, elections coming and the public treasury bankrupt… this is not the time to start repatriating people.”
Following the resumption of the deportation of Haitian nationals, US Congresswoman Yvette Clarke said on Wednesday, “Earlier today, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that removal proceedings have resumed for Haitian nationals in the United States who lack Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
The majority of the people DHS intends to remove have not been accused of any crime […] In this period of turmoil, the forced removal of Haitian nationals will only exacerbate the difficulties of rebuilding Haiti and deny families access to remittances from relatives in the United States. I am deeply saddened that these deportations have resumed, and I call on President Obama and his administration to end this policy immediately.”