Biden Administration Haiti Deportation Policy on Shaky Ground

“The United States recently sought support from the U.N. Security Council for an armed intervention in Haiti to end what U.S. ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield has described as a situation of total chaos in the country. And yet U.S. officials seem unwilling to concede that deporting Haitian citizens to that same chaos—rampant gang violence that has been escalating for years, disastrous food and fuel shortages, a resurgent cholera epidemic—might be, to put it mildly, a moral failure. This disconnect between the Biden administration’s recognition of the dire conditions in Haiti and its failure to acknowledge the difficulties those conditions pose for deported Haitians became more pronounced this summer with reports that Haitian officials were essentially holding deportees for ransom in the national penitentiary. More than an accent note on a broader hypocrisy, this last detail has opened up the Biden administration to serious legal challenges that put the removal of certain categories of Haitians on unstable legal ground.”

KJ