We call on the U.S. government to immediately halt expulsions of Haitians.
The Denver Justice and Peace Committee, DJPC condemns the maltreatment and expulsion of Haitian refugees at the US-Mexico border. The Biden Administration’s use of the racist Title 42 of the Trump era to justify the expulsion of Haitian people seeking refuge is deplorable. No migrants seeking refuge in the United States should receive this manner of treatment.
Fifteen thousand migrants, mostly Haitian, sought asylum at the Del Rio, Texas border. They fled political and social unrest in Haiti, much of it triggered by US actions to repeatedly undermine Haitian democracy and sabotage the Haitian economy.
Helpless families, many of whom had left Haiti years ago and trekked across much of Latin America to get here, were forced to sleep under a bridge at the border, go back and forth across a river to obtain supplies from Mexico, and are now subject to expulsion to Haiti. U.S. border agents on horseback whipped and corralled migrants, recalling slave patrols of centuries past and exemplifying the racism that underpins U.S. policy towards Haiti, the only country in history to have been born through a slave revolt.
The view through a historical lens makes this U.S. government action all the more grotesque. Consider for instance, the longstanding role that the U.S. government has played in backing authoritarian regimes such as that of the Duvalier family which ended in 1986 after nearly three decades.
More recently, the U.S. has backed a series of corrupt, authoritarian leaders in Haiti including Jovenel Moise, who was assassinated in July, and his successor, Ariel Henry. In fact, the Pentagon has confirmed that several of the suspected assassins had been trained by the U.S. military while serving in the Colombian military. The billions of dollars in public and private aid which have flowed into Haiti over the years are regularly siphoned off by corrupt leaders and their allies leaving the rest of the population to struggle in poverty.
Despite the ongoing crisis, exacerbated by the recent assassination of the sitting president and yet another earthquake in a country without the capacity to respond, the US has sent more than 35 flights in recent days to Haiti.
Under these conditions, Haiti is in no way equipped to accommodate the return of the migrants who are in desperate need of food, shelter, safety, and medical attention. Expelling Haitians violates U.S. law and international treaty commitments to allow migrants to present claims for asylum. Further, the expulsions contradict actions President Biden took in May of this year when he granted temporary protected status to Haitians in the United States because their country could not receive additional deportees. Yet, more than 4000 migrants have been flown to Haiti in recent days, dwarfing the 600 deported all of last year by the Trump administration.
It is time for the U.S. government to step back from its intervening role in Haiti, a role that has only deepened poverty, violence, and corruption. Haitians themselves have forged a broad-based democratic movement that includes many sectors of civil society, a movement that is supported by the Congressional Haiti Caucus in the U.S.
We call on the U.S. government to immediately halt expulsions of Haitians, grant a path to citizenship for all immigrants, and eliminate all elements of racism in US policy towards Haiti, and in immigration policy more general. Furthermore the U.S. government should condemn the actions of the border patrol and eliminate it.
In Solidarity
The DJPC Team
October 1st 2021
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