US says Haitian deportations will continue

WASHINGTON, CMC

The Department of Homeland Security says it will continue deporting illegal Haitian immigrants, despite appeals by the Rene Preval administration.



The Preval administration has repeatedly warned that US deportations could destabilise the impoverished, French-speaking Caribbean country, where food, water and housing have been in extremely short supply since major storms last summer.

Susan Cullen, the Homeland Security director of policy, said the department intends “to continue to coordinate the removal of Haitian nationals to Haiti”.



The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, said 30,299 Haitians are on “final order of removal,” meaning that an immigration judge has ordered them deported from the US.



Nicole Navas, an ICE spokeswoman, said about 600 Haitians are currently detained by the agency, and 243 have electronic monitoring.



Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, was battered by four tropical storms and hurricanes last summer. Since then, Washington temporarily halted deportations in mid-September. In December, ICE resumed the expulsions, claiming that conditions had normalised in Haiti.



Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s Ambassador to the US, said his country will continue stalling most deportations of its nationals until the Obama administration decides whether to grant them Temporary Protected Status (TPS) that would allow undocumented Haitians to remain in the US. \"Everybody is saying Haiti is still reeling from those four hurricanes, the food riots of last year, the price of fuel. Haiti had a very, very bad year in 2008,\" he said.



\"Why should we compound the problems of the country by sending all those deportees at this time if we don\'t do it for Nicaragua or El Salvador?\" he asked.



TPS allows immigrants from countries experiencing armed conflict or environmental disasters to stay and work in the US for a limited time.



Twice last year, Preval formally requested TPS that has been granted to a handful of Central American and African countries; but, on both occasions, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff denied the requests. In September, the Haitian government stopped issuing the travel documents needed to send its residents home.



On Saturday, over 2,000 Haitians rallied in Southern Florida, calling on the Obama administration to grant TPS to Haitians and to stop the deportations.“I was expecting right after Obama took office that he would do something,” said Bob Louis Jeune, head of the Haitian Citizens United Taskforce in West Palm Beach, Florida, and an organizer of Saturday’s rally. “But he never said anything,” he added. “We get tired of sending letters and emails, and nobody said anything.”