Articles

Why Haitian nationals have a tougher time returning home than deportees from the U.S.

Miami Herald / Jacqueline Charles / April 22, 2020

Haitians stranded by the coronavirus in the United States are finding that it's a lot easier to get back home if you're a U.S. deportee than if you're a tourist stuck abroad.

Haitian Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe, confirming in a radio interview that the government is preparing to receive 129 more deportees from the U.S. on Thursday, has issued conditions under which stranded Haitian nationals can return.

They must, according to new Haitian government rules, have a confirmed flight reservation; present proof of a recent negative coronavirus test, and they must self-quarantine for 14 days at one of two Port-au-Prince hotels designated by the government.

"We will test them after 14 days, which is the incubation period for the disease, and everyone will go home," Jouthe said Monday during an interview on Vision 2000's "Guest of the Day" program with journalist Marie Lucie Bonhomme.

Jouthe's public acknowledgment of the requirements, first issued to his foreign minister in early April, came as he confirmed that three recent deportees to Haiti from the U.S. tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19, the respiratory disease.

In fact, he used the deportees' positive infections as justifications for the new policy, which can cost Haitians anywhere from $100 to $150 a night in unforeseen hotel expenses.

"This is crazy. It is absurd," said Kerline Philippe, who has been stranded in Miami for more than a month. "Do they know that some people are living at the airport? Do they know some people have no place to go? They were staying at a hotel and now they've run out of money?"

The irony of the government's policy concerning those who went to the U.S. legally and those who did not is not lost on her.

"You are accepting 129 people who committed crimes to come to the country, who haven't been tested, and us, who haven't committed any crimes, are stuck here because of an irrational, sudden decision the government took," she said.

Philippe said she was scheduled to fly back to Haiti on March 20, the same day that the country's borders closed after the president confirmed the first two positive cases.

"Normally, a country gives you a 24-hour notice, or a 48-hour notice. But this was done all of a sudden," she said. "What they are saying is that in order for you to come to Haiti you have to have money. And if you don't have money, stay there and die. We are here and we are stuck here."

Unapologetic while also contradictory at times, Jouthe said Haiti was facing "a fait accompli" with COVID-19 while acknowledging "the measures are drastic, and they are unpopular."

"We are obligated to think about the 11.5 million inhabitants who are living in the country," he said. "I'm not thinking of the person who cannot pay $1,000 or $1,500 for a hotel. I don't think about that at all."

On Monday, Haiti extended its state of emergency over the pandemic while also welcoming the reopening of factories, a decision that the prime minister, again, defended.

But where last week his message emphasized the country having dodged a bullet with its 40 confirmed coronavirus cases and three deaths, on Monday he seemed exasperated as he acknowledged the fight he was up against.

The majority of the country's confirmed cases — they were 47 during the interview and hours later had climbed to 57 — are imported, Jouthe said, and spread because people ordered to self-quarantine after arriving back had refused, and went out socializing instead. The government, he said, had to do what it could to limit spread of imported cases.

The three positive cases among the 68 Haitian deportees from the United States was "a significant percentage given the danger posed by this disease," he said, while defending Haiti's acceptance of the deportees. They are Haitian, he said, and therefore welcomed home.

Jouthe's use of the deportees' COVID-19 infections as justification for his new testing and quarantine requirements for Haitians wanting to return home — while not publicly opposing the U.S.' deportation flights — shows the government's "complete lack of comprehension of the situation," said Haitian rights activist Marleine Bastien.

Bastien and Philippe pointed out what most Americans know all too well: Getting tested for the coronavirus, which has already killed 44,228 people in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University's tally of cases, is not easy and getting a retest to show you're now negative is next to impossible.

"They don't have the backbone to stand up and say, ‘No our island is not capable; it lacks the infrastructure to support deportees who have been exposed to the coronavirus,' " said Bastien, executive director of the Family Action Network Movement.

On Tuesday, Bastien's organization issued an open letter to Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.

"We write to ask you that you not only ask President Trump to put a moratorium on all deportations, but for you to also stop accepting deportees," the letter said, noting that 49 of the deportees are minors. "Immigration advocates in the U.S. and around the world are ready to stand with you in this inhumane fight. We are asking you to act now to prevent further spread of the disease!"

Haiti's new return requirements come as an unknown number of its nationals continue to be stranded outside the country, and the country spends thousands of dollars quarantining hundreds of repatriated Haitians who have been returned by the U.S. and the nearby Turks and Caicos Islands.

The few commercial flights that have been authorized by the Haitian government to repatriate U.S. citizens and permanent resident have been ordered — with a few exceptions — by the Haitian government to fly empty into Port-au-Prince for fear of further spreading the disease. The U.S. deportation flights, meanwhile, have arrived full without proof of detainees' status for the coronavirus.

Jouthe has indicated a willingness to revisit some aspect of the policy but has continued defending it. Immigration advocates say they would hope he undertake the same consideration of the deportee issue, citing Guatemala's recent resistance as an example.

After more than 70 deportees on two ICE flights recently tested positive for the virus, the Central American nation announced that it was indefinitely suspending all deportations from the U.S. Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Trump administration had deployed a team from the CDC to Guatemala "to review and validate" its coronavirus testing.

In an address to the nation on Friday, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei confirmed the CDC's presence and said 12 randomly selected and examined migrants by the team did in fact test positive.

"The detention centers are places where it's very easy to contract COVID-19 and to spread it," said Nicole Phillips, legal director for the Haitian Bridge Alliance, an advocacy group based in San Diego. "We are getting more and more reports of detainees as well as ICE agents who are contracting the virus; their conditions make it very easy to spread."

Phillips recently led an organizational sign-on letter on behalf of the Alliance asking the Trump administration to halt deportations to Haiti. Signing it were 164 human rights, immigrants' rights and faith-based groups along with academic institutions across the United States and Haiti.

"This is a terrible time to be deporting people," Phillips said. "They are doing it in a haphazard way. They are not testing people before they deport them. Countries' strategy to avoid this global pandemic is to quarantine off, stop the airport, stop the borders, by land, by sea, by air. Now the U.S. is forcing them to accept deportees."

Phillips said the 129 people arriving Thursday "could double or triple the amount of COVID-19 cases in the country and it can clearly undermine the strategy to quarantine the country off. This just reminds me of the policy the U.S. government has had, which is they did not care about Haitians, and it only cares about its borders and its own policies."

In a press statement issued this week, Miami Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson said she intends to introduce the Haitian Deportation Relief Act, calling for the suspension of deportations of Haitian nationals until the COVID-19 pandemic has ended in both the United States and Haiti. The legislation will also ask for a report to Congress on Haiti's health infrastructure; COVID-19 prevention and treatment efforts; the political and economic conditions on the island nation; the psycho-social, health, and economic impact of removal on Haitian nationals and their families; alternatives to removal; and other issues.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the U.S., immigration advocates and some members of Congress have been calling for more compassion from the Trump administration in regard to those in U.S. immigration custody.