One of the most shameful parts of former President Donald Trump’s xenophobic legacy is continuing unabated under President Joe Biden’s administration. With roughly six dozen flights and counting as of this writing, the United States is continuing to deport thousands of Haitian refugees seeking asylum in the United States back to one of the poorest and least stable nations in the world.
In fiscal year 2021, which ended on September 30, the US admitted fewer than 8,000 refugees. For perspective, Trump -- whose top immigration adviser was an outed white nationalist -- admitted 12,000 refugees in fiscal year 2020, which was 6,000 fewer refugees than his stated cap of 18,000. The Biden administration has since promised to admit 125,000 refugees in fiscal year 2022, which makes the ongoing mass deportations of Haitian refugees even more puzzling.
Both Trump and Biden used a section of US health law known as Title 42 to justify rapid mass deportations of Haitians, citing the Covid-19 pandemic as the reason to deny them a fair hearing. Since the start of the pandemic, more than 1.1 million migrants have been deported under Title 42. By the end of Trump’s presidency, the US deported approximately 444,000 under Title 42. Biden deported another 690,000 in just his first nine months as president.
Biden’s harsh treatment of Haitian refugees was even too much for Daniel Foote, the US’ Special Envoy to Haiti. In September, Foote wrote a scathing resignation letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, saying Haiti’s “collapsed state” would not be able to accommodate the refugees that the Biden administration is deporting.
“The people of Haiti, mired in poverty, hostage to the terror, kidnappings, and massacres of armed gangs and suffering under a corrupt government with gang alliances, simply cannot support the forced infusion of thousands of returned migrants lacking food, shelter, and money without additional, avoidable human tragedy,” Foote wrote. “The collapsed state is unable to provide security or basic services, and more refugees will fuel further desperation and crime.”
“Surging migration to our borders will only grow as we add to Haiti’s unacceptable misery,” he added.
The Haitians detained in the United States have been subjected to horrific conditions, according to Texas-based immigration nonprofit RAICES. Accounts RAICES tweeted include allegations of refugees being “treated like dogs,” being denied medical diagnoses and treatment despite being sick, Customs and Border Protection officers on horseback whipping refugees, and even depriving refugees of food.
“Sometimes there were small amounts of bread, but never enough for everyone,” RAICES tweeted. “It was so bad they would try to cross back to [Mexico] to find food, but CBP on horseback would try and block them from crossing - leaving them to starve.”
However, the United States’ antipathy toward Haiti goes much further back than the Biden and Trump administrations. In fact, US hostilities with Haiti began shortly after Haitian slaves freed themselves from their European oppressors through violent revolution. When he was president, Thomas Jefferson -- who himself kept approximately 600 human beings in bondage -- cut off aid to Haiti following the revolution in order to prevent word of the uprising from inspiring slaves held captive on American plantations.
As The Nation’s Elie Mystal observed, white people never forgave Haiti for “getting free without asking nicely.” The United States didn’t officially recognize Haiti until nearly 60 years after Haitians declared their independence from France. And in the early 20th century, the United States military occupied the small island nation, managed its finances, and even plundered its coffers to force Haiti to pay reparations to the descendants of French slaveholders.
Anti-colonial sentiment against the United States is likely what led Haitians to elect the leftist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1990, who sought to bring the military under civilian control and investigate human rights abuses. However, Aristide wasn’t even in office for a year before he was ousted from office in a US-orchestrated coup. Raoul Cedras -- the general behind the coup who led the US-backed regime following Aristide’s ouster -- had been a paid CIA informant for years prior to his role in the overthrow of Haiti’s first democratically elected leader. Additionally, Emmanuel Constant, who led a death squad that terrorized supporters of Aristide, was also on the CIA’s payroll.
The more recent assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise also reeks of US involvement. Following the arrest of Colombian mercenaries accused of carrying out the plot, the Washington Post reported that 13 of the 15 mercenaries received US military training while fighting drug cartel forces in Colombia. NPR reported that a Florida-based company connected the architects of the plot to the mercenaries. And despite Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry firing the prosecutor who found evidence of Henry’s alleged involvement in Moise’s assassination, Henry has received the backing of the Biden administration.
US meddling in Haiti even extended into natural disasters. The 2010 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that devastated Haiti prompted the international community to contribute $9 billion for Haitian relief efforts. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, led fundraising efforts through their family foundation that brought in tens of millions of dollars. However, approximately 90% of all relief money ended up going to non-Haitian organizations. This left Haiti unable to truly recover from the disaster before being hit by a category 4 hurricane in 2016. And despite Haiti’s close proximity to the US, and despite the US wasting approximately 15 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine in just the last six months, Haiti was one of the last countries in the world to have the vaccine available for its 11 million residents.
Currently, the Build Back Better legislation (also known as the reconciliation bill) being debated in the US Senate has a proposed path to citizenship for millions of migrants who are still in legal limbo, as both Democrats and Republicans have failed over the years to pass comprehensive immigration reform. Despite the Senate parliamentarian’s recent ruling that immigration reform couldn’t be included in the reconciliation bill, 92 legal scholars have gone on the record stating Vice President Kamala Harris has the authority to preside over the Senate for the purpose of including a pathway to citizenship in the bill.
Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.), one of the original authors of the DREAM Act, authored the immigration reform language in the bill, which includes a pathway to citizenship for “Dreamers, Temporary Protected Status (TPS)-eligible individuals, Deferred Enforced Departure beneficiaries, and undocumented essential workers, including farmworkers.”
“A pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants will advance our economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, help reduce our national deficit, raise wages, add a cumulative $1.5 trillion to U.S. GDP over a decade, and create more than 400,000 new jobs,” Rep. Roybal-Allard stated. “The time has come to provide our hardworking immigrants with the security of citizenship so they can continue their significant contributions to our nation and its economy without fear.”
While this legislation, combined with President Biden’s 125,000-person refugee admission cap, would allow Haitians fleeing instability to breathe a sigh of relief, its passage is still uncertain. Much like gun reform, Congressional Republicans have made a habit of using immigration as a political lightning rod in order to motivate their base to vote for them. Solving either problem would likely reduce the GOP’s fundraising ability, as it would give them one less polarizing issue to exploit.
On the Democratic side, Senators Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have singlehandedly obstructed their party’s ability to pass the bill with a simple majority through the budget reconciliation process. For her part, Sinema was caught on video on two occasions blatantly ignoring constituents asking her point-blank to support a pathway to citizenship. This is despite Sinema stating as recently as 2019 that Dreamers are “citizens in everything but paperwork,” and “deserve a path to citizenship.”
If the poem on the Statue of Liberty that urges the world to send “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” is to be more than empty words, President Biden owes it to refugees from Haiti and elsewhere to provide safe asylum in the US. Given the US’ long, racist history with Haiti, their huddled masses yearning to breathe free deserve a lot more than a cold shoulder.
Carl Gibson is a freelance journalist and columnist whose work has been published in CNN, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Houston Chronicle, Barron’s, Business Insider, The Independent, and NPR, among others. Follow him on Twitter @crgibs.
