Miami airport spokesman who said flights were chartered by ICE says he made a ‘mistake’
A Miami International Airport spokesman— who told the Miami Herald Sunday that two flights headed to Latin America were chartered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement— retracted his statement Monday, saying he had made a mistake and that the flights were actually chartered by Royal Caribbean.
“I made a mistake. My apologies,” Gregory Chin, MIA’s spokesman, said Monday afternoon. “I was in the middle of something when you asked me about the flights.”
The news that two ICE flights potentially headed for San Pedro Sula, Honduras, with 34 people on board, as well as to Manaus, Brazil, with 42 people on board early Sunday comes as the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 in ICE custody has spiked and as countries around the world urge the Trump administration to halt deportations during the global pandemic.
The charter flights were operated by Swift Air, a frequent ICE contractor, and took off at around 1 a.m. and 7 a.m. Sunday. When a Herald reporter asked Chin late Sunday night whether the Miami-Dade Aviation Department was notified by ICE about the flights, Chin said the agency was.
“Yes, we were notified,” he responded in a text. On Monday afternoon, Chin sent the Herald an email saying he had misspoken.
“As discussed, my apologies for the misunderstanding we had last night by text,” Chin wrote. “You then asked if ICE notified MDAD, to which I answered yes, only because we had information about the flight but not because I knew ICE had chartered the flight.”
He continued: “I only assumed these were ICE-chartered flights because you were asking about those specific flights, but that was my mistake.”
Last week, Guatemalan Health Minister Hugo Monroy said 75 percent of the passengers on a recent deportation flight from the U.S. had tested positive for the coronavirus. The Guatemalan government said deportation flights from the U.S. were suspended until further notice, making it the third coronavirus-caused suspension of deportation flights since March 17, when Guatemala closed its borders.
“Under international law, countries have a duty to take back their citizens,” a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department told the Miami Herald earlier this month.
Haiti Foreign Minister Claude Joseph, who has been trying to get U.S. officials to slow down deportations so that the country can better prepare for the reception of returnees, has also chimed in, as planeloads of Haitian nationals continue to be sent back to the country.
“I have many times over the phone tried to convince our American friends,” Joseph said. A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department would not discuss Joseph’s request, saying they cannot comment on diplomatic discussions.
After more than 60 Haitians were deported in early April, 27 members of the U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter to House leaders asking that any future coronavirus response package bar the administration from deporting Haitian nationals for the duration of the pandemic. Another flight carrying 129 passengers is scheduled for Tuesday, a Haiti government spokesperson said.
The letter pointed out that on top of the pandemic, Haiti is already facing a situation in which its president is ruling by decree, the economy is in shambles and it faces a humanitarian crisis, including famine, following last year’s repeated violent protests that forced schools and businesses to close for months.
On Monday, Reuters reported that at least three people that were on the most recent deportation flight from the U.S. to Haiti have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Meanwhile at detention centers in South Florida, detainees have told the Herald that people keep being transferred from place to place with no personal protective equipment.
On Saturday, one Guatemalan detainee said that he was transferred at least seven times in four days, after deportation flights to Guatemala “kept getting canceled.”
The Guatemalan national said he and about 50 other people were taken to the Krome detention center in Miami from the Glades detention center in Moore Haven on April 13. The next day the group was transported to MIA, only to find out the flight had been canceled. From the airport they went back to Krome.
The next day, they went back to the airport and the flight was canceled again. After that they went back to Krome, then to Glades, where they were told to pack up. That’s when they were transferred back to Krome to “wait.”
“They lug us around like pieces of luggage,” the detainee said Saturday.
The next day, he began to “frantically type goodbye messages” via a communications app that the detention center uses.
“They’re taking us again,” he told Rebecca Talbot, a volunteer with Friends of Miami-Dade Detainees, a Krome visitation program on Sunday afternoon. “Thank you for everything. Don’t forget me.”
As of Monday morning, 124 ICE detainees across the country have tested positive for the virus. However, ICE officials told Congress last week that only 400 of their 32,000 detainees have been tested.
This story was originally published April 20, 2020 at 10:40 AM.
