Groups call on Biden to stop deportations as Haiti retreats due to earthquake, storms and Moise assassination

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Amy Goodman: This Is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzalez.

Two weeks after a massive earthquake in southern Haiti, thousands of survivors grow desperate as they continue to face shortages of food, shelter and medicine. This is a resident of Les Cay.

Michael Pierre: [translated] The earthquake destroyed my house. Several members of my family died. I had 13 goats: 11 died; I have two left. I came to the market to see if I could sell the remaining two. We have nothing. We need help.

AMY GOODMAN: As Haitians deal with the aftermath of the earthquake and the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July, a coalition of more than 300 rights groups here in the United States sent a letter Monday to the Biden administration urging it to halt all deportations to Haiti and expand the temporary protection regime. This is a temporary protected case. They say more Haitians have been deported since Biden took office than during the entire 2020 fiscal year.

We now turn to Guerline Jozef, co-founder and CEO of Haitian Bridge Alliance.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Guerline. These are very difficult times in Haiti. Can you explain what is happening? Are people actually being deported to Haiti at the moment?

Guerlain Joseph: Good morning, Amy. And thank you very much for hosting us.

We get a lot of calls from our clients who are in immigration custody that they have been told to pack their luggage as they prepare to be deported. It’s very troubling, given the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, we are just beginning to recover from the earthquake, the hurricane that virtually devastated the country two weeks ago, followed by the assassination of President Jovenel Moss in July, on July 7. So we are upset.

We are very concerned, as the Biden administration has promised that it will not have any deportations to Haiti. But what we hear from our customers is very worrying, because they have been told that they will be deported soon. And we have to worry, because literally a month after the assassination and two days before the earthquake, they sent two planes to Haiti full of asylum seekers, including children and infants. More than 135 people were deported to Haiti literally a few weeks after the assassination.

JOAN GONZALES: And can you talk about the problem that asylum seekers have in terms of whether they try to come through Mexico? Is this the most recent path taken by Haitian asylum seekers?

Guerlain Joseph: Yes. So, since 2015, we’ve been seeing Haitian immigrants arriving at the US-Mexico border. This was during the era of President Obama. Most of them were placed in detention and eventually withdrawn. But on August 28, 2016, we saw a turn of events, as they were no longer given humanitarian withdrawals, but were placed in immigration detention and then deported. Things have gotten really tough under President Trump where, you know, the border has been closed indefinitely, and the use of Address 42 starting last year has actually resulted in the MPP closing the border completely.

And what we started to see was, because of the policies that were enacted in the United States, the wall kept moving more, down, all the way to Panama, all the way to Guatemala, all the way to Nicaragua, where people were prevented from continuing their deadly journey Extremely. They were prevented from continuing the journey to reach the US-Mexico border to seek asylum. And what we continue to advocate on behalf of people, who have found themselves at the US-Mexico border since 2015, 2016, and who have been waiting for more than five years, is to have access to be able to come and claim asylum. And we’re also seeing, you know, new arrivals of people coming by boat.

And we understand how Secretary Mayorcas, Vice President Harris, and President Biden keep telling people, “Don’t come. If they come, they’ll be intercepted and sent back.” But how do you tell someone not to come and he is not only dealing with a man-made crisis, a political crisis and violence, and above that he is dealing with natural disasters like the earthquake and storm that devastated the country two weeks ago?

JOAN GONZALES: Speaking of the earthquake, what do you hear about the assistance being provided by the international community, especially given the terrible scandal that happened in the last big earthquake in Haiti of all the stolen aid and the ensuing corruption in supposed international aid?

Guerlain Joseph: We advocate very hard – so we don’t see a repeat of 2010. For example, how do we work directly with affected community members on the ground to provide direct assistance to them? What the Haitian Bridge Coalition and many other communities within the diaspora are doing is working alongside Haitian organizations and organizations on the ground and community members to provide humanitarian assistance and figure out how we can help rebuild healthy infrastructure, so we can make sure that when – and not” So” — now that we know how vulnerable Haiti is to the earthquake and other natural disasters, how do we support a structure that will withstand earthquakes, so we can save lives?

So now we’re looking at disaster mitigation, where we’re providing direct assistance, because the Haiti Bridge Alliance is providing cash assistance directly into the hands of the most vulnerable so they can rebuild, so they can bury their loved ones. Like the guy I heard earlier today talking about losing everything, including the goats. This is their livelihood. This is what they use to be able to send their children to school. So, what we do is provide direct assistance to these people so that they can at least survive the next few months. But at the same time, how do we make sure that we provide assistance that will be long-term, do we make sure we have the right path? When something like this happens again, we can quickly reach people in remote locations. How do we make sure that we have schools and hospitals to treat those who unfortunately fall victim to natural and man-made disasters?

AMY GOODMAN: Well…

Guerlain Joseph: But what are we? [inaudible] At the moment it’s awesome.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Guerlain, you have a country that is probably facing massive starvation from climate change, from a hurricane, from disrupting people’s lives. Is there a working government? Because we also emerged from the assassination of the Haitian president, who was assassinated by Colombian mercenaries, some of whom were trained by the United States. Was that also suspended, this investigation, as the last crisis unfolds, and surprisingly people are being sent back to this catastrophe?

Guerlain Joseph: Amy, thank you very much for bringing this up. As we push through recovery and rescue and search and rescue, from what we’re seeing, the Haitian government is almost non-existent. We do not receive daily briefings on what is happening on the ground from the government. Again, again, the country, the people on the ground are the ones trying to move forward and make sure the people are okay. I’m not an expert on this. But from what we see, we do not have a functioning government, as we all know it, after the assassination of the president. Even before that, we were –

AMY GOODMAN: We have 15 seconds, Guerlain. sorry.

Guerlain Joseph: Yes. We were struggling to recover from all the political turmoil. But now we are asking for support on the ground so that we can move forward from those disasters, both man-made and natural. But, as you mentioned, Amy, we’re still not seeing the help we need from the Haitian government right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Guerline Jozef, we want to thank you for being with us, co-founder and CEO of Haitian Bridge Alliance.

Democracy Now! It was produced with Renee Feltz, Mike Burke, Dina Gozder, Christ Rhodes, Nermin Sheikh. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzalez. Stay safe. Wear a mask.

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