Rights Groups Protest ICE Deportations to Haiti

New York based Civil Rights groups are protesting a decision by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to proceed with deportations to Haiti.  The Center for Constitutional Rights, the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti and Alternative Chance all cite the continued health and physical infrastructure hazards brought on by the earthquake that struck the island earlier this year as reasons to keep Haitian detainees in the US.  ICE had previously placed a ban on the deportation of Haitian nationals who were out of immigration status and faced criminal conviction.

The massive devastation on the island has now been coupled with a cholera outbreak as relief efforts have failed to repair damages to critical facilities such as the island’s freshwater infrastructure.  Barbara Gonzalez, a spokesperson for ICE, said that the deportations would commence in January 2011 for people with criminal records whose, “repatriation is not reasonably foreseeable."

The policy change was announced via a phone conference convened by ICE, but details of the scope of the program were withheld.  Given the declining situation in Haiti, the decision came as a surprise to rights advocates.  In a combined statement, the three rights groups asserted that, “The situation in Haiti has not improved and may be even worse now than when the deportations were halted in the weeks after the devastating earthquake of January 2010.”

They also cited a Red Cross report that stated that the the Haitian prison system was the epicenter of the cholera outbreak.  The delivery mechanism for the disease is the untreated water being provided to prisoners.  This was no surprise to the rights groups who described the prisons as “facilities deemed deplorable before the earthquake.”

Their statement cites the US government’s responsibility under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) agreement, which prevents the deportation of prisoners who are likely be tortured in the countries they are returned to.  A previous court decision restrained US officials from deporting HIV positive Haitians because they would be returned to a jail system in Haiti that could not provide the necessary medical treatments.

The US signed on to the CAT in 1988 and ratified the pact in 1994.  The CAT bans torture for the purpose of acquiring information as well as any “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”  US officials in the Bush and Obama administrations have been consistently cited as violating the act because of their use of extraordinary renditions, secret assassinations and the continued operation of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

The groups found it ironic that while Haitian prisoners will be deported, the US State Department simultaneously issued a travel warning to US citizens.  The State Department recommended not traveling to Haiti because of the “continued high crime, the cholera outbreak, frequent disturbances in Port-au-Prince and in provincial cities, and limited police protection and access to medical care.”

The groups joined in a call for ICE “to halt roundups and detentions of Haitian nationals in the U.S. and continue the stay on deportations.”  In addition, they demanded that ICE fully disclose all of the details about their deportation plan, especially information about what assessments led them to formulate the plan in the first place.

Once again, US officials, this time in the Obama administration, seem oblivious to the human cruelty their policies will create.  The sheer brutality that typifies daily life in post-earthquake Haiti is a tragic example of the social nightmares that decades of neoliberal economic policies have created throughout the world.  Dumping more people into this situation is the very definition of cruel and inhuman.

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Billy Wharton is a writer, activist and the editor of the Socialist WebZine.  His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the NYC Indypendent, Spectrezine and the Monthly Review Zine. He can be reached at whartonbilly@gmail.com.  Become a FAN on Facebook.