23621: (Hermantin)Sun Sentinel-aitian detainees deported again (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Haitian detainees deported again



By Carol J. Williams
Los Angeles Times

October 22, 2004

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti · Clifford Estera was 3 years old when his family left
Haiti for Boston, and he puts his chances of re-integrating into the society
of his birth at close to zero.

"I have no ties here. I don't know what I'm going to do," he said at the
Port-au-Prince airport this week.

For now the 24-year-old will not get a chance to try to fit in. Like two
dozen other handcuffed passengers aboard his flight from Miami, Estera was
taken directly from the airport to prison, though he has been convicted of
no crime in his homeland.

Ending a six-month hiatus that gave the U.S.-backed interim government time
to restore some semblance of order after a rebellion, the Department of
Homeland Security this month quietly resumed deporting Haitians who were
being held at U.S. detention centers for visa violations or those who had
served prison terms for criminal convictions.

Returnees such as Estera, who had served time in the United States for drug
trafficking, were detained on arrival here for fear they would join forces
with local gangsters in the interest of survival, Haitian police and justice
officials said.

"They already have bad records, and considering the circumstances that
prevail in this country, we have to fear they will resume lives of crime,"
said Wiener Cadet, head of the national security directorate of the Interior
Ministry.

"We would like to do something to steer them in a different direction, but
even those who haven't ever committed crimes can't find jobs here."

Washington has the legal right to deport foreigners who commit crimes in the
United States, including boat people who entered the country illegally, said
Smith Barthelus, the Haitian Interior Ministry official responsible for
foreign liaison.

But, he said, repatriating longtime U.S. residents with criminal histories
to Haiti contradicts White House pledges to help restore security here after
former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled into exile in February to
escape the rebellion. Dozens have been killed in violence this month.

"The government of the United States is not interested in what is going on
in Haiti," Barthelus said. "They say they want to help us recover. But if
that is true, [the deportation effort] is certainly counterproductive."

Interim Justice Minister Bernard Gousse asked U.S. officials in April to
suspend the deportations because Haiti's police force was in such tatters
then that a few hundred armed rebels managed to take control of the country
and free all 4,000 detainees in jails and prisons. The freed felons, along
with deportees from U.S. correctional facilities, organized kidnapping and
drug-running gangs, Gousse said.

U.S. officials informed the Haitian government last month that deportations
would resume because American prisons and detention facilities were becoming
overcrowded, Barthelus said he was told.

Human rights groups agree that the deportations are legal, but they lament
the policy adopted eight years ago that allows even long-term U.S. residents
to be expelled to their homelands without recourse.

"Unfortunately, due to many of the changes in the 1996 laws, the list of
convictions for which an individual can be deported has increased
dramatically, while simultaneously eliminating the ability of a federal
immigration judge to even hear a discretionary waiver case," said Jack
Wallace, a lawyer with the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center.

Politicians from states with large Haitian-American populations have been
lobbying for temporary protected status for Haitian natives.

"It is simply unconscionable that the Bush administration should continue to
deport Haitians -- some of them long-standing U.S. residents -- under these
circumstances," said Rep. Kendrick B. Meek, D-Fla.

The Los Angeles Times is a Tribune Co. newspaper.


Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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