a1817: Asylum no better than Haitian Life: Orlando sentinel (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>


Haitian women find asylum little better than life they fled

By Jody A. Benjamin | Florida Correspondent
Posted April 29, 2002

MIAMI -- Six months ago, she lay crying on a filthy street
in Gonaives, Haiti, fending off kicks and punches from
machete-wielding men screaming political slogans.

Arriving in Florida after nine days aboard a crowded boat
with no food or water, Jeanne Noel is safe from her
country's political violence.

But because she is Haitian, the mother of three is now
detained at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center,
following rules designed for criminals, though she is not
one.

"Our days are not good at all," Noel, 40, said through an
interpreter, her dark brown eyes welling with tears. "You
don't sleep. You don't eat. I don't know why I am in jail."

Noel is one of 60 Haitian women seeking asylum who have
been at the maximum-security jail near Miami International
Airport since Dec. 3.

As a Haitian, Noel is subject to rules instituted that
month requiring her detention even if asylum officers think
she has a credible claim that returning to Haiti would mean
death or imprisonment.

Members of other ethnic groups -- Cubans, South Americans,
Chinese -- who are not suspected terrorists are released to
relatives pending final asylum hearings.

Because she is a woman, Noel must be housed at the county
jail, which the Immigration and Naturalization Service says
is the only safe place to detain her. The less-restrictive
Krome detention camp is not an option since December 2000,
when INS began to move women to the jail in response to
allegations that guards were sexually abusing them.

"This is outrageous. It is unspeakable," said Marleine
Bastien, founder and director of Haitian Women of Miami.
"It is a travesty of justice. I wish the eyes of the world
will open to what's going on in the U.S., which is supposed
to be a protector of human rights."

INS says the change in detention policy was meant to
discourage Haitians from making dangerous sea crossings.
U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard is weighing a lawsuit filed
in March by immigrant advocates alleging that the federal
government actively discriminates against Haitians.

In interviews with the South-Florida Sun-Sentinel, the
Haitian women said they felt humiliated by conditions at
the jail. They complained of strip searches and constant
body counts, inedible and monotonous food, lack of money to
call relatives living nearby, insults and occasional
mistreatment by some of the correctional officers.

"They say we smell," said detainee Laurence St. Pierre, 27,
a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Last week, the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees criticized INS handling of the Haitian refugees in
Miami as "contrary to . . . international refugee law."

Likewise, the Miami-Dade branch of the NAACP complained
about the plight of the detained Haitians in an April 16
letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft.

At TGK, noncriminal asylum-seekers such as the Haitian
women are housed in unit K-46, a two-story open room
segregated from the rest of the jail by two heavy doors of
metal and glass. .

Unlike at Krome, where male detainees play soccer on open
fields and walk around an open campus, the women at TGK
spend most of each day in unit K-46. Since February, jail
officials began limiting detainee access to the recreation
yard to one hour every other day and requiring detainees to
sign up in advance, rules instituted after a county inmate
escaped.

While male detainees at Krome are entitled to two contact
visits per week, the women at the county jail are allowed
one per month.

None of the unit's officers speaks Creole, according to
both jail officials and detainees. When officers need to
communicate something important, they usually call a
Creole-speaking officer on another floor of the jail.

Many of the Haitian detainees are Pentecostal Christians
from the north-central coastal city of Gonaives. Active in
a Haitian opposition party, they fled by boat on Nov. 25
after a series of confrontations with pro-government groups
turned violent. St. Pierre said she was raped and beaten by
a local leader of the pro-government Lavalas party after
she helped campaign for the opposition. After going into
hiding for a few weeks, St. Pierre said she fled Haiti for
her life, paying $30 in Haitian dollars (about $6 U.S.) to
board an overcrowded refugee boat.

"I would prefer for them to get me a coffin than to send me
back there," St. Pierre said. "There is no security in
Haiti."

Jody A. Benjamin is a reporter for the South Florida
Sun-Sentinel, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.

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