Biden must halt removals to Haiti. NOW!

On Tuesday, December 14 the Biden Administration sent two full removal flights to Haiti. These were the 94th and 95th such flights since Biden launched mass deportations to Haiti in mid-September. The deportations are ostensibly a response to an increase in the number of Haitians attempting to cross into the United States in September. 

The September “crisis” was splashed across major media outlets with photos of 15,000 Haitians and others under a bridge between the Rio Grande and the Del Rio port of entry in Texas. At the time, Biden’s Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, claimed that 8,000 Haitians were immediately returned to Mexico. Since then, thousands more have been expelled: Beginning September 19 of this year, the Biden Administration removed over 10,000 Haitians from the United States in expulsion and deportation flights to Haiti. (IOM data as of Dec 12 here -there have been three flights since.)

Between January and March of 2021, the Biden administration expelled over 2,000 Haitians. 

Human rights organizations, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and several Members of Congress have denounced the removals, without demonstrable impact on the White House. Indeed, A DHS spokesperson said that, according to the US embassy in Port au Prince, the situation in Haiti has improved, and thus people could be safely returned. 

This is untrue.

The security situation in Haiti has deteriorated significantly since July - with the assassination of Haiti’s president that month, and an explosion of gang activity since, especially kidnappings. The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti’s most recent human rights report begins, “the government has continued to dismantle the country's accountability systems, which has fueled unprecedented violence by gangs,2 many with government connections, as well as a continued deterioration of the social and economic conditions in the country.”

Added to this, a massive earthquake in the southern peninsula in August left close to 500,000 people without secure shelter. The violence has hampered recovery efforts. Food insecurity is on the rise, as are prices for nearly everything due to fuel shortages. Yet, Biden has seen fit to expel 10,000 refugees back to Haiti - even as the Civil Rights division of the Department of Homeland Security warned that doing so constitutes a violation of the US commitment of non-refoulement under international law. 

To add insult to injury, The Biden Administration has utterly failed to deliver on its promise to assist the Government of Haiti and the International Organization on Migration’s efforts to receive people. The US delayed promised aid, leading the IOM to provide far less relocation assistance than earlier agreed upon. Most people received little more than the price of a bus ticket from the airport in Port au Prince or Cap Haitian to their home. Meanwhile, a massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement corporate partner, the GEO Group, cashed in with a $15.76 million contract to organize removal flights to Haiti in September and October.

Although Biden maintained a progressive immigration stance during the election, he has failed to assemble a progressive coalition on immigration during his presidency. Historically, the treatment of Haitians has been an indicator of the direction of future US immigration policy. This is true now as well.

The Biden Administration has also expanded removals to southern Mexico, alongside new direct expulsion flights to Honduras and Guatemala over the last two months. To be clear, these new flights are not regular deportation flights, but summary expulsions under Title 42. The United States has been expelling people from Central America and Mexico back into Mexico with minimal processing, and no opportunity to request asylum since March of 2020. 

However, because many people try to re-enter the United States once expelled, the Biden Administration expels people by plane to get them as far from the border as possible. As with Haitian removals, expulsion flights to southern Mexico and Central America make a complete mockery of the public health dimension of Title 42 - under which the Centers for Disease Control and Protection directed the Department of Homeland Security to expel people immediately to avoid detention and processing in congregant settings. You can’t fly people out of the United States without first holding them in a staging area, e.g. “congregant setting” - exactly what Title 42 was supposed to avoid. 

We invite you to join us in condemning ongoing removals to Haiti. You can send a message to your member of Congress asking them to raise their voice in opposition to Biden’s Haiti expulsion policy by using our Legislative platform here.

We also invite you to join us in demanding an end to Title 42 by signing (and sharing) this petition to the Biden administration.