Deportees in Haiti

After the 2010 earthquake, a catastrophic occurrence that killed 300,000 Haitian people and devastated an already financially lacking country where healthcare is scarce, the U.S. halted deportations of Haitian immigrants. Qualifying Haitian nationals living in the U.S. on the date of the earthquake were granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS), even if they lacked other lawful immigration status. However, people who have been convicted of two misdemeanors or one felony offense fall outside the scope of TPS protection and can still be deported. According to a deportation report by The University of Miami Law Immigration Clinic, “under current U.S. immigration law, even long-term lawful permanent residents with U.S. citizen spouses and children can be deported for certain crimes, including misdemeanors.”

Currently, a flight of twenty to forty Haitian-American deportees arrives in Port-au-Prince once a month as a result of criminal prosecution. Many of these people arrive with little insight of life in Haiti. In some cases, those deported were born in the Bahamas or another neighboring country, but have Haitian parents. There are instances of deportees who have never even been to Haiti before and barely speak Creole. Others have left spouses and children behind in the U.S., and are unsure of when they’ll ever see them again. Some are lucky enough to have family in Haiti, but those deportees who do not are given temporary residence at an accommodation center set up by the Haitian government. After a couple of months they are left on their own without additional support.

Though their criminal charges are most frequently misdemeanors, in Haiti these deportees are often stigmatized as murderers or rapists. Due to their isolated and unique circumstances, deportees often form communities amongst themselves. Some build new lives with Haitian spouses and have children here. Others express feelings of slowly dying because their medical needs are not being met and they do not have enough knowledge of the system or the means to change their circumstances.