Biden administration officials Thursday defended the government’s immigration policies toward Haitian migrants, including the deportation and repatriation of individuals back to the volatile Caribbean nation despite its spiraling violence and deepening humanitarian crisis.
“We work with partners in the Caribbean to ensure the most rapid and humanitarian humane repatriation process possible, including funding international organization partners to provide reception and reintegration support,” Emily Mendrala, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs covering Cuba, Central America and regional migration, told a panel of human rights protectors.
“The United States continues to enforce its immigration laws,” she added. “We encourage people of all nationalities who hope to visit or reside in or unite with family or seek protection in the United States to pursue the growing number of legal pathways to do so.”
Mendrala was part of a high-level U.S. government delegation that addressed the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights during a third day of public hearings about Haiti. The session on Thursday, like the Tuesday one, focused on migration and was live-streamed from Los Angeles.
She and other colleagues outlined some of the legal pathways for Haitian nationals, including new border rules aimed at providing an alternative to irregular migration. Also the Department of Homeland Security, they reiterated, was preparing for the lifting of Title 42, the controversial pandemic-related public health policy that allows the administration to quickly expel migrants back to their home countries or to Mexico.
The policy, like new rules that require Haitian migrants and others to seek pre-authorization via a cellphone app to enter the United States, has been heavily criticized by immigration advocates, who accuse the Biden administration of taking away people’s rights to apply for asylum at U.S. borders.
“In early January 2023, the United States expanded a parole process for nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, through which, as of mid-February, more than 11,300 Haitians have been thoroughly screened and vetted and received authorization to travel to the United States and stay for up to two years,” Mendrala said about the new humanitarian parole program. “After implementation, we saw a marked decrease in the cumulative number of the four eligible nationalities arriving irregularly at the U.S. southern border.”
The U.S. delegation also included representatives of the Department of Homeland Security and the new U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, Frank Mora. They each took turns outlining the United States’ current immigration policy as it relates to Haitian migrants. The public hearing had been requested by several immigration advocacy groups including the University of Miami Law Clinic, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, and the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. They have along accused U.S. administrations of unfair immigration practices when it comes to the treatment of Haitian migrants.
In a letter, advocates argued that despite the ongoing violence in Haiti, where heavily armed gangs are targeting, kidnapping and raping individuals, the Biden administration is continuing to return Haitians both by Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter planes and onboard U.S. Coast Guard cutters when they are picked up at sea.
In requesting the hearing, they accused the U.S. of practicing racism and discrimination in the enforcement of its immigration laws against Haitians and other Black migrants, and of being persistent in forcing Haitians’ return despite the threat to their safety. This includes the ongoing security and humanitarian crises and the life-threatening conditions in Haiti’s overcrowded and inhumane prisons.
“Individuals deported to Haiti from the United States face grave, imminent threats to their human rights to life and liberty,” the advocates said in a letter requesting the hearing. “But even prior to their forcible return to Haiti, they suffer from other serious human rights abuses at the hands of U.S. immigration authorities, including pervasive discrimination on the basis of race and national origin, and denial of due process during evaluations of their claims for humanitarian protection.”
During the hearing, the commission heard testimony from Paul Pierrilus, who was born in St. Martin to Haitian parents and deported to Haiti on Jan. 11, 2021, despite not holding Haitian citizenship and never living there. Arrested and convicted for selling a controlled substance, he was issued a final deportation after 15 years of immigration check-ins. During his recorded testimony from Port-au-Prince, he detailed alleged abuse while in ICE custody in the United States before being deported and spoke of ongoing dangers in Haiti where he has to move every few months because of violence.
Commission members also heard from the wife of Patrick Julney. Julney was immediately jailed in Port-au-Prince after disembarking the plane in Haiti in June 2022. Julney’s wife and advocates alleged that while imprisoned in Haiti he was held on a $6,000 ransom.
“Black people in the United States are 2.5 times more likely to be arrested than whites and though they are less than 6% of the undocumented population, they make up more than 20% of immigration population facing detention and deportation on criminal grounds,” said Daniel Tse of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, another advocacy group that requested the hearing.
Tse accused the United Sates of targeting “Haitians and other Black immigrants for criminal prosecution on the basis of race.”
“What happened to Paul happens to thousands of Black immigrants in the United States. I can attest to this because I was also detained by U.S. immigration authorities for about nine months when seeking protection after I left my home country of Cameroon,” he said.
U.S. officials did not address the specific accusations or issues raised in the individual cases. However, they remained steadfast in their policies and detailed their process for returning migrants.
Daniel Delgado, acting director for border and immigration policy at DHS, noted that in addition to the new humanitarian parole program, Haitian nationals in the United States received an 18-month extension of Temporary Protected Status in December and a re-designation by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Both decisions will benefit more than 210,000 Haitian nationals, who will be eligible to temporarily live and work in the United States, he said.
“The data show that these processes are working, and that when presented with a safe, orderly and lawful process, individuals will choose this over the dangerous and irregular journey throughout our hemisphere,” he said. “Maritime migration is something that the department takes very seriously and that we continue to strongly discourage.”
Guerline Jozef, co-founder of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, pushed back at any characterization that TPS “was a gift,” telling the commission: “We had to fight for over a year to prove the humanity of Haitians in order for that to happen.”
“Returning people to the very same danger they have fled, there is no humanity to that,” she said.
Commission members made several observations before the conclusion of the hearing. Joel Hernández García of Mexico noted that the current situation in Haiti was “explosive.” There is “a state of terror” that exists where on average 15 kidnappings occur a day, he said.
“If the root causes of migration are not dealt with, we will not be able to reach the goals that the United Nations has set four years ago to reach a migration that is safe, regular and and orderly. That should be the ultimate goal,” Hernández said. “And that makes it necessary that in the region, policies be adopted, an immigration policy, with a sense of reality, and awareness of the causes of migration but with a human rights perspective.”
Margarette May Macaulay, the Jamaica commission member and the newly elected board president, concluded by expressing her discomfort with the U.S. immigration system. Having visited the southwest border and detention centers, Macaulay said: ”They are definitely prisons, not detention centers.”
She then asked the U.S. delegation, which didn’t have time to respond: “Do you not have the principle of rehabilitation after somebody who’s been convicted of a criminal act, especially those categorized as non-violent and who will not be a danger to society?
“Because most common law countries do,” she said, referencing the case of Pierrilus, whose request to testify in person was not granted by the U.S. government. “And I’m concerned about what seems to be this absolute excessive autonomy of ICE because no ... common law country would deport anyone without a lawful, legal hearing in a court of law. So I hope you can explain further what is happening in the United States because as you say, you are known as a country of laws.”
