a1184: U.S. deports Haitians to horrific jails (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Alan Elsner, National Correspondent

     MIAMI, March 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. government is trying its hardest
to deport Gertha Clairville to Haiti, a country she was not born in, has
never lived in and where she faces certain imprisonment and possible death.
     Clairville, 21, is one of hundreds, possibly thousands, of people
caught in a 1996 law aimed at U.S. residents who are not citizens. Some
have been convicted of crimes as trivial as shoplifting and check kiting.
     Under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act,
non-citizens convicted of a long list of violent or non-violent offenses
can be automatically deported.
     The Immigration and Naturalization Service hopes to deport Clairville
despite the fact that doing so will leave her three small children to grow
up without their mother and knowing that she will be thrown into a Haitian
prison.
     "I was born in the Bahamas in 1980 and my parents, who were Haitian,
came to the United States when I was one year old," said Clairville,
interviewed in prison in Miami where she is awaiting a final decision on
her case.
     In 1998, Clairville got into a fight with another woman and threatened
her with a knife. She was convicted of aggravated battery and sentenced to
two years in prison. When she had served her sentence, she was put on a
plane with 25 others and deported to Haiti, a country she had never seen.
     "When I got there, the officials couldn't understand me and I couldn't
understand them. They took me to a jail in Port au Prince. I was there for
two months," she said.
     She was put in a cell with nine other women. They took turns sleeping
on a concrete floor with no blankets and bought their own food and water
since the prison did not supply any. A prison officer threatened to rape
her and only backed off when she screamed out in terror.
     "It was terrible. Why did they send me to a place where I wasn't even
born?" Clairville said.
     After two months, Clairville's lawyers from the Florida Immigration
Advocacy Center succeeded in having her returned to the United States. She
won an appeal to stay in the country in immigration court but the
authorities took the case to the Immigration Board of Appeals which ruled
against her. Her lawyer is now trying to take the case to federal court but
Clairville could be returned to Haiti at any time.
     In a similar case less than two years ago, Haitian-born Claudette
Etienne was convicted of selling a small amount of crack cocaine, an
offense which a U.S. judge did not think merited imprisonment.
     But the INS deported her to Haiti where she was thrown in prison. Four
days later, after drinking contaminated water, she died.
     Her body lay unclaimed in a morgue a year later. Her husband,
struggling to bring up their two children, lacked the money to bring her
home and give her a decent burial.
     INS spokeswoman Karen Kraushaar said U.S. responsibility for the fate
of a deported person ended when the individual left U.S. soil. She said the
United States had deported 125 Haitians between October 2001 and January
2002, of whom 77 had been classed as felons under the 1996 immigration law.
     "Our authority ends with the deportation. We do not have the ability
to dictate to a foreign government how to treat its own nationals," she
said.
     Asked about conditions in Haitian prisons, she said: "It would be a
good idea to visit a Haitian prison before making sweeping statements. It's
all hearsay."
     But the U.S. State Department, in its past two human rights reports,
lambasted Haiti for its prisons and for jailing people indefinitely if they
are deported by other countries.
     "Very poor prison conditions, arbitrary arrest and detention, and
prolonged pretrial detention continue to be problems. Many criminal
deportees who already served full sentences overseas are put back in jail
for indefinite periods of time," the department said in its 2001 report.
     Haitian authorities say that in a country with 85 percent
unemployment, criminal deportees have to be locked up to prevent them
resorting to a life of crime.
     A BBC reporter, Andy Kershaw, visited a Haitian prison at Croix de
Bouquets in January, 2002 and found windowless cells, "dark, fetid and hot
as a foundry." He saw 17 U.S. deportees in a cell which measured roughly 13
feet by 13 feet (four metres by four metres).
     Wendy Young of the Womens' Commission for Refugee Women and Children
said she found it astounding that the United States was deporting people to
Haiti, knowing what lay in store for them.
     "There is a big question whether we are sending people back to torture
or even to their deaths. Is this what the United States wants to be doing?"
she asked.
     Clairville's three children, aged 6, 5 and 4 are being brought up by
their grandmother who is in frail health. Clairville says the youngest does
not even know her.
     "I had my baby in jail. They took her away when she was one day old,"
she said. She fears that if the INS succeeds in deporting her to Haiti once
more, she will not survive to ever see her children again.