U.S. Resumes Deportations to Haiti: Inhumane? Racist?

The Miami Herald reports that “U.S. immigration authorities have resumed deportations to Haiti, ending a three-month-plus reprieve of sending Haitians back to their storm-battered country.”

Haiti is still recovering from back-to-back storms that heaped wide scale devastation. Hurricanes left at least 800 people dead, tens of thousands homeless, and caused about $1 billion in damages. ”The decision to resume deportations to Haiti shocks the conscience,” said Randolph McGrorty, executive director of Catholic Legal Services, Archdiocese of Miami. “Deportations at this time are simply inhumane, sending people to conditions of famine and disease. The change in policy is unwarranted by reports on the ground which confirm that the humanitarian crisis in Haiti continues and worsens.” McGrorty added: “It is incomprehensibly counter-productive to the U.S. government’s objective of avoiding mass migration, and so cruel and misguided that I cannot explain it by any other way than to condemn the policy as racist.”

KJ