12027: A family divided: Haitian fisherman, sons separated from mother (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

A family divided: Haitian fisherman, sons separated from mother while
fighting for asylum

By Jody A. Benjamin
Staff Writer
Posted May 13 2002

Early on the morning of Dec. 3, Florida's coastline finally came into view.

Ernest Moise, his two teenage sons, their mother and her two older children
were among 187 Haitians crammed onto a 30-foot refugee boat that, after a
nine-day trip from Haiti, was listing dangerously toward the coast.

Some of the weary travelers tried to swim to shore. But Moise stayed behind.

"I didn't jump in because I could not just leave my family," Moise said. "I
was so happy, everyone was so happy, because we could see that we had made
it. But I did not want us to be separated."

Today they are separated, with no idea of when they will be together again.

Last month Moise, 39, a former conch fisherman, became one of the few
Haitians from that boat to win political asylum and the right to stay in the
United States. He was released from detention on March 19.

But his joy at starting a new life in Miami is undercut by the likelihood
that other family members who came on the same boat, including Jesiclaire
Clairmont, 45, the mother of his sons, will be sent back to Haiti. An
immigration judge has turned down Clairmont's asylum petition, and she is
being detained in a maximum-security jail in Miami with other female Haitian
asylum-seekers. Clairmont's two adult children from a previous relationship
are detained at Krome Detention Center in southwest Miami-Dade County and at
the jail.

Appeals are pending, but a pro bono legal service agency representing Moise
and Clairmont says it's unlikely family members will be allowed to stay here
together.

Immigrant advocates, who had named Moise the lead plaintiff in their federal
discrimination lawsuit seeking the release of 270 Haitian asylum seekers,
consider it a victory that the agency released him. Family separation, they
say, is an unfortunate but common circumstance for asylum seekers.

"The harsh reality is that families are split up every day," said Randy
McGrorty, executive director of Catholic Charities Legal Services, the
agency that represents Moise and Clairmont for free. "It's a common
occurrence to see family members with similar asylum claims where one gets
granted and the other denied. It shows that the asylum laws are not
uniformly applied."

When the Immigration and Naturalization Service took the Dec. 3 boat trip
survivors into custody, officials said they would attempt to keep families
together by housing them in a motel. On Dec. 10, INS was keeping 48 people,
almost all Haitians, at the motel.

"When there is a family unit, we do everything that we can to accommodate
that situation," said INS Chief of Staff John Schewairy. "We don't have a
family detention center in Florida. [The motel] is the best alternative that
we have."

But in an interview at their cousin's home in Miami's Little Haiti
neighborhood, Moise said INS separated the group shortly after their arrival
in Florida, even at the motel.

There, the two boys, Emmanuel, 14, and Daniel, 16, went to one room with
him, while Clairmont and an adult daughter, Lina Prophete, 21, went to
another. Clairmont's adult son, Renaud Prophete, 23, was sent to Krome.

Schewairy said it is common INS practice to separate detainees by gender. He
said it would not have been appropriate to house the boys with their mother,
who was in a section with other female detainees, because of their ages, 16
and 14.

"If they were minors of a younger age, we might have looked at the situation
differently," Schewairy said. "But we are not going to put children of an
advanced age in a coed situation. That's not appropriate."

Moise said the boys had no opportunity even to speak to their mother during
the day. His son Daniel said that he would try to communicate with her at
mealtimes, but officers told him he could not linger in the hallway.

"They wouldn't let me speak to her," said Daniel, 16. "They always said,
`You have to go to your room.'"

Emmanuel, 14, said he once heard from other detainees that officers were
escorting his mother down a hallway. "By the time I got there to see her, it
was too late to talk to her," he said. "I saw her wave to me."

But Schewairy said detainees at the motel are allowed to interact in the
hallways. "It's a very casual arrangement, but there is a provision for
detainees to interact in the hallways," he said. "If [the Moise family]
availed themselves of that, I don't know."

In early February, after two months at the motel, INS transferred Clairmont
and Lina Prophete to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in
Miami.

The elder Moise said the group initially thought that Clairmont had been
returned to Haiti. "I was crying," Emmanuel said.

INS said it had done what it could do to maintain the family unit by housing
the boys with Moise. Clairmont and her daughter were initially placed at the
motel because of lack of space at Turner Guilford, Schewairy said, and when
it became available, INS moved the women there.

Schewairy said INS handled the case properly. "We had a primary caregiver
[Moise] that was identified for the two boys. [Clairmont and Prophete] were
both adults. If we had had room at TGK, we would have taken them there right
away."

But critics say INS' change in policy last December toward Haitians arriving
by boat contributed to the family's plight. Previously, they could be freed
pending their asylum petitions.

U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek, D-Miami, said the situation might have been avoided
had INS released the Haitians after they had demonstrated a credible fear of
persecution. That would have given them more time to prepare their asylum
cases.

"It's absurd," Meek said. "They say they want to keep families together, but
then why should this mother be treated differently?" Meek said she plans to
raise the issue of INS treatment of Haitians in a meeting Wednesday between
members of the Congressional Black Caucus and National Security Adviser
Condoleeza Rice.

Catholic Charities learned of Moise in February, after sending a staff
attorney to help Haitians with their asylum applications. Many had filed
one-sentence petitions and were rapidly being scheduled for hearings.

Moise was scheduled for an asylum hearing two days after a Catholic
Charities staff attorney met him. The agency asked the court to delay the
hearing while it filed a supplemental application.

At first the agency thought Clairmont would be included in the application
as Moise's spouse, McGrorty said. But then it was learned the pair were not
married.

"We knew Moise had a strong case, but there was not a lot of time," McGrorty
said. "We thought the mother's case was even stronger. But we could only get
an extension for a couple of days. We decided it was better to just proceed
with what we had for Moise, then hope for the best with the mom."

Since his release from detention seven weeks ago, Moise and his sons have
moved in with a cousin in Little Haiti. The pink bungalow with peeling paint
and cracked windows squats on a tumbledown block close to Interstate 95.

Moise said he is not bitter, although he worries for his sons.

"I know it's true that they have procedures they have to follow, but I
always knew that eventually they would let me out," he said. "And they did
give me my freedom. For that I love America. INS, the judge, the lawyers --
all of them I love."

When he was in detention, he told his sons the INS' procedures were the
result of the terrorist attack on the United States. Now, when he finds the
boys worriedly whispering about their mother, he plays dominoes with them or
tells them stories for distraction.

"I tell them that right now I am the mother and the father," Moise said. "It
is beyond our control. We just have to do what we can do."

Jody A. Benjamin can be reached at jbenjamin@sun-sentinel.com or
954-356-4530.










Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel


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