Articles

A Haitian man, exposed to the coronavirus, was taken off ICE deportation flight at last minute

Miami Herald / Monique O. Madan and Jacqueline Charles / April 7, 2020

A Haitian national who had been exposed to COVID-19 respiratory disease while in federal immigration custody was not among a group of detainees deported back to Haiti by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tuesday.

The detainee, whom the Miami Herald agreed not to name, was part of a mobilization late Monday night from members of Congress and immigration advocates to stop the flight from departing from Alexandria, Louisiana. However, ICE still sent the plane to Haiti with 61 detainees on board.

Both a Haitian government source and the deportee's wife confirmed to the Herald that the detainee was not among the 61 detainees who landed in Port-au-Prince shortly after 1 p.m. Tuesday. He was removed from the flight at the last minute after members of Congress, including Miami Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson, failed to get the Department of Homeland Security to halt the deportations back to Haiti amid the coronavirus global pandemic.

"Haiti," Wilson wrote, "lacks the public health infrastructure to prevent the spread of the virus or to treat a large number of infected people. ... It is unconscionable to repatriate migrants, who may be unwitting carriers of the virus, into such an environment."

Haiti Foreign Minister Claude Joseph, who has been trying to get U.S. officials to slow down deportations so that the country can better prepare for the reception of returnees, said there would be 68 detainees aboard and all were non-criminals. All of the returnees, he said, would be placed in quarantine by the health ministry given that they are coming from a COVID-19 hot spot— the United States.

While Haiti has confirmed 25 coronavirus cases and one death, the United States had 387,547 confirmed cases and more than 12,291 deaths as of Tuesday, according to the Johns Hopkins University & Medicine coronavirus map.

It was unclear what happened to the other seven detainees. The wife of the detainee in question said she also isn't sure why her husband was removed from the flight.

"He called me and said he was taken to the Pine Prairie center," the detainee's wife said. "It looks like they took him off the flight last minute."

According to ICE data, at least one detainee at the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in Louisiana has tested positive for COVID-19, making it at least the third time in which the Haitian national could be exposed to the virus.

Attorney Ira Alkalay, who represents the detainee, said his client was exposed to COVID-19 while in at least two other ICE detention centers — Bristol County Jail in Massachusetts, where a staffer tested positive, and at Strafford County Jail in New Hampshire, where a deputy has tested positive for the virus.

The Herald reviewed the Haitian national's documents, which showed the deportee was at both facilities before being transferred to the Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana — a center where people are held for up to 72 hours before entering or leaving the country. On Tuesday morning, instead of boarding the Swift Air flight, the detainee was instead transferred to Pine Prairie, about 50 miles south.