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The BIden administration's inhuman mass deportations of desperate Haitian asylum seekers who had gathered under a bridge at the Texas-Mexico border are continuing, or even increasing, despite the angry resignation of the US envoy to Haiti in protest against this egregious violation of basic human rights and international law.
In a scathing resignation letter, the US envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, wrote:
"The people of Haiti, mired in poverty, hostage to the terror, kidnappings, robberies and massacres of armed gangs and suffering under a corrupt government with gang alliances, simply cannot support the forced infusion of thousands of returned migrants lacking food, shelter, and money without additional avoidable human tragedy...
The collapsed state is unable to provide security or basic services, and more refugees will fuel further desperation and crime."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/23/haiti-us-envoy-resigns-daniel-foote-migrant-deportations-letter
There have also been furious protests against the deportations from Congressional Democrats, including Rep. Andy Levin (Michigan) and others.
However, despite the Biden administration's attempt to push back against Foote's condemnation and continue using the Title 42 health protection provision as a cover for its Human Rights abuses - in keeping with a policy begun by Donald Trump and Stephen Miller - it also appears that DHS may have released thousands of Haitians gathered at the border into the US to pursue their asylum claims. This is according to a report in The Hill:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/573718-biden-administration-defends-handling-of-haitians-amid-uproar
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW) more than 300 organizations have protested against the Biden' administration's mass deportations against Haitian asylum seekers, including the use of Title 42. HRW states:
"This violent treatment of Haitians at the border is just the latest example of racially discriminatory, abusive and illegal US border policies that are returning people to harm and humanitarian disaster."
https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/09/21/us-treatment-haitian-migrants-discriminatory
The danger to the Haitians is underscored by the fact that the Biden administration has granted TPS to Haitians who arrived in the US before July 29, 2021. Are those who arrived after that date in any less danger upon return to Haiti than those who arrived before that date? But this kind of rational thinking, evidently, has no place in the decision making in the US, which has a long history of racial discrimination against and mistreatment of Haitian immigrants.
https://www.voanews.com/a/rights-groups-say-us-has-long-history-of-mistreating-haitian-migrants/6243703.html
And the racial discrimination that has long been built into America's immigration system, and which Trump, Miller and their Republican Congressional and state legislative supporters have brought out into the open and tried harder than ever before (in recent times) to establish as official US immigration policy is far from being limited to Haitians.
Roger Algase
Attorney at Law
Harvard College A.B.
Harvard Law School LL.B
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Resignation by US Haiti envoy and Congressional outrage fail to halt Biden's mass deportations violating Human Rights and international law by Roger Algase
Last edited by ImmigrationLawBlogs; 09-24-2021, 11:32 AM.You must be logged in to post a comment.
Even assuming that this is true, and that Haitians wouldn't keep trying to escape anyway from the horrible conditions in their own country caused by gangs, political violence in the wake of the president's assassination and the recent 7.2 earthquake, what would be so terrible about welcoming more Haitians, just as America welcomed a large influx of white immigrants from the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries during the cold war? The answer, based on America's sad history of anti-immigrant racism in general, and against Haitian immigrants in particular, is all too obvious.
Roger Algase
Attorney at Law