Coast Guard has returned to Haiti most of the 356 Haitians who arrived in Keys this week
Nearly 200 Haitian migrants were returned to Haiti on Friday by the U.S. Coast Guard after their bid to reach U.S. shores ended with their overloaded sailboat running aground behind a wealthy North Key Largo resort in the Upper Florida Keys and some of their compatriots making a harried dash to freedom in the choppy waters.
The repatriated migrants were among 356 Haitians who had packed a small, blue cargo freighter. The boat arrived Sunday and landed near the ultra exclusive Ocean Reef Resort on North Key Largo in the Florida Keys. Coast Guard officials said they were notified of the grossly overloaded vessel at around 1 p.m. by a good Samaritan.
Video footage and images showed 158 men and women plunging into the sea and swimming about 200 yards to shore, while the remaining 198 looked on from the decks of the tilting boat.
The dramatic landing was the fourth such in four months, and by far the largest maritime migrant smuggling event in recent memory to involve Haitians at sea.
According to some of returnees, who were dropped off in the northern city of Cap-Haïtien on Friday, the boat left Haiti on March 1 from Port-de-Paix, a city in northwest Haiti that is a popular launching pad for migrant trips. While passengers weren’t sure of the route they took to end up in the Florida Keys, they described enduring three days of violent seas before the boat ran aground Sunday.
”It was very difficult for them,” said Giuseppe Loprete, chief of mission for the United Nations International Organization for Migration, which was on hand to receive the migrants. The returning migrants, he added, were “traumatized” and frustrated over their failure to reach the U.S. after having spent a lot for the failed voyage.
Loprete added that while nearly 200 migrants were being received in Cap-Haïtien, another 364 were also being returned Friday by Cuba after “arriving them in the same fashion, by boat.”
There was also a deportation flight scheduled to arrive from the U.S. with 94 Haitians who had been expelled.
The surge in Haitian migration comes amid worsening conditions in Haiti, where gang-related violence and kidnappings have made life unbearable. At the same time, Haitians are faced with soaring food prices, few job prospects and a deepening political crisis.
Last July, the country’s president was assassinated and his murder remains unsolved. Five months later the country was hit by a magnitude 7.2 earthquake along its southern peninsula.
While several of the returning migrants in Cap-Haïtien claimed they did not pay for the voyage, one man said he had paid $1,000. Some said they were still weak from the journey and cited Haiti’s surge in kidnappings and gang-related violence as their reasons for leaving.
Several migrants said when they attempted to jump off the boat, they were told by U.S. authorities on the scene not to. They were later led to believe that they would be transferred to land in the U.S., they said, and were surprised to see Friday that they were back in Haiti.
“This bothers us a lot,” said one of the migrants, a man in his 50s who declined to give his name but said he is from nearby St. Louis du Nord in northwest Haiti. “We thought they were going to take us to Krome [Detention Center]. It’s only when we returned to O’Kap we saw that we were back in Haiti. “
Another migrant who identified himself as Jinaud, 24, also said he and the others were told they would be taken to “the United States. We all believed them because we thought it was the truth,” he said. “They were running on the seas with us and everyday they said we were going to the U.S.”
Believing he would have had a different fate had he jumped out of the vessel, he said, “when we were preparing to jump, they appeared and told us not to.“
At no point while they were in U.S. custody, he said, were they asked why they were fleeing Haiti.
The U.S. Coast Guard directed all inquiries about Friday’s repatriation and migrants’ claims about being misled to the Department of Homeland Security.
Haitian and immigration advocates told the Miami Herald that they are seeking access to the 158 Haitians, who U.S. Customs and Border Patrol said were turned over who to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations to conduct credible fear interviews in order to determine if they will be allowed to apply for asylum. Advocates want the migrants to have a chance to file a claim for asylum in the U.S., but in order to do so, they must be appraised of their rights, advocates said.
“What the Biden administration is doing is not right. Not only is it illegal, it is inhumane. No country should be deporting anyone to Haiti right now,” said Marleine Bastien, founder and executive director of Family Action Network Movement.
Bastien has organized a protest for 3:30 p.m. Saturday in front of the Customs and Border Protection station in Dania Beach to demand access to the detained migrants and an end to deportations.
“The way the Haitians are being treated is horrible. It is criminal. It is racist,” Bastien said. “It is shameful. To deport these people and deny them their rights is inhumane.”
Bastien and others say they want answers as to why the 198 who failed to make it off the boat were repatriated even though they were in U.S. waters. The difference in treatment has sparked accusations that the Biden administration is practicing a sort of “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy in regard to Haitian asylum-seekers.
The longstanding immigration directive, which began in 1995 under then-President Bill Clinton and was ended in 2017 by President Barack Obama, allowed fleeing Cubans who had made it to U.S. soil to stay, while those caught at sea were repatriated. Haitians never benefited from the policy.
“For me, it’s the hypocrisy of how we can have one stance with respect to some issues around the world and a different stance when it comes to Haitians and Haiti,” said Gepsie Metellus, the director of the Sant La Haitian Neighborhood Center, a Miami nonprofit that services the Haitian community. “Due process is important here and people need to be heard, to express their fears; the circumstances that compelled them to make such a grave, grave dangerous choice and so for this administration to just go back on its word to the Haitian-American community that it would treat refugees humanely, that’s a severe disappointment.”
Prior to the migrants’ repatriation to Haiti, Sant La had urged the Biden administration to give each of the 356 migrants the opportunity to be heard.
The footage of the fleeing migrants dropping into the sea was gut wrenching, she said, and was a reminder that Haitians are fleeing a country in the throes of political and economic instability, and in the cross hairs of increasingly violent gangs.
“Haiti has become a war zone,” a statement from Sant La said. “Activists and journalists are assassinated with impunity. Children are forced to join gangs and participate in violent acts. Women are raped and violated with impunity. And entire neighborhoods have been taken over by gangs resulting in the internal displacement of over 20,000 families.”
Over the past five months, the U.S. Coast Guard has repatriated 1,527 Haitian migrants back to Haiti after stopping them at sea.
Other Haitians have made it through, with nearly 700 landing in the Florida Keys since November. Haitians have also continued to cross the U.S. southern border by foot, which led to the expulsion of 18,547 Haitians since mid-September when thousands flooded an international bridge in Del Rio, Texas.
Miami Herald Immigration Reporter Syra Ortiz-Blanes contributed to this report.
This story was originally published March 11, 2022 at 5:02 PM.
