Quixote Center works to influence United States policies that impact the people we work with. We advocate with Congress and the Administration to change US foreign policies that exacerbate extreme poverty and vulnerability in Haiti and Nicaragua. Extreme poverty, violence, and vulnerability lead families to make the heartbreaking decision to migrate, to the United States or elsewhere. We work to address these root causes when they have a US policy solution. We also advocate for immigration policies in the United States that promote the dignity of migrants, focusing on preserving the asylum system.
Our current priorities include:
Quixote Center impacts policies through:
Join us in calling on the Biden administration to extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Haitians who will otherwise lose their status in February 2023, putting them at risk of deportation. We are also calling for the administration to redesignate the date for TPS so that all Haitians currently in the U.S. may apply.
For more background on TPS is and why it is so important, click HERE.
One year ago today Haiti's acting president, Jovenal Moïse, was assassinated in his own home. A group of two-dozen mercernaries, most apparently hired from Colombia, were arrested in the days following Moïse's murder, but the story of who was ultimately behind the plot to kill Moïse continues to unfold.
There has been a brief, no doubt temporary, respite from the expulsion of people back to Haiti under Title 42 this week.
Quixote Center Denounces Preliminary Injunction on Title 42; Continues Call for Restoration of Asylum
Washington D.C.—Today a federal court in Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction against the Biden administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's decision to end Title 42. This decision means that the United States Border Patrol is required to continue to expel migrants immediately upon encounter, thus, denying refugees access to asylum or other humanitarian relief.
At 6 AM on a Wednesday, I joined community organizers and volunteers outside Union Station to greet migrants bused from the US-Mexico border to Washington DC. I expected everyone to arrive haggard and exhausted, as I feel after just a few hours on a bus. Instead, they came bright-faced and smiling, exuberant to have arrived.
[Warning: This post contains descriptions of extreme violence]
Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, issued a statement on March 17, that read, “Armed violence has reached unimaginable and intolerable levels in Haiti…It is crucial for urgent steps to be taken to restore the rule of law, to protect people from armed violence and to hold to account the political and economic sponsors of these gangs.”
The statement offered the following account of recent violence:
The Biden Administration expelled 450 people to Haiti, including 44 children, 20 of whom were infants, on three flights this week. These flights bring the total to 235 expulsion flights to Haiti since Biden took office, more than 23,000 people in total, and 21,000 in the eight months since the debacle in Del Rio last September. Another 8,000 people were summarily expelled into Mexico during the Del Rio crisis.
As we've been discussing now for a few weeks, the Biden Administration decided to bring enforcement of Title 42 policies, which enable the US government to expel asylum-seekers without allowing them to apply for asylum, to a close on May 23. The announcement has led to a political backlash from Republicans and even many Democrats. As a result, several GOP attorneys-general sued the Biden administration for ending Title 42 too quickly.
Texas' governor Greg Abbot is putting immigrants on buses to Washington, D.C., apparently as some kind of protest related to the Biden administration's decision to end Title 42. The first bus arrived on Wednesday, April 13, but not at Homeland Security, Congress or the White House. Rather, the bus arrived in front of a building on Capitol Hill that houses several television networks' newsrooms, including Fox.
“Expelling asylum seekers under Title 42 has not done anything to protect us from COVID” From the Congressional Testimony of Dr. Adam Richards, Physicians for Human Rights
Title 42 appears to be on its way out. After two years and 1.8 million expulsions, impacting well over 1 million people, Biden announced, and the CDC confirmed, that Title 42 would end on May 23, 2022.
The Centers for Disease Control and Protection issued the Order Suspending Introduction of Certain Persons from Countries Where a Communicable Disease Exists on March 20, 2020. The order claimed authority under Sections 362 and 365 of the Public Health Service (PHS) Act, 42 U.S.C.
Biden has expelled nearly as many Haitians in 12 months (20,200+) as were deported during the previous 20 years (22,000-23,000)*** under three different presidents. Indeed, Biden’s administration has likely expelled far more: In addition to these official removal numbers, another estimated 8,000 Haitians were expelled back into Mexico in September of 2021, voluntarily according to DHS Secretary Mayorkas, but in circumstances that make that characterization suspect.
The Biden administration extended Title 42 again this week. This ensures that for the next 60 days at least, migrants encountered at the border will continue to largely be denied any kind of due process, most of them facing immediate expulsion.
