MIAMI (AP) – The Biden administration sent about 50 Haitians back to their country yesterday authorities said, marking the first deportation flight in several months to the Caribbean nation struggling with surging gang violence.
The Homeland Security Department said in a statement that it “will continue to enforce United States (US) laws and policy throughout the Florida Straits and and the Caribbean region, as well as at the southwest border. US policy is to return non-citizens who do not establish a legal basis to remain in the US.”
Authorities didn’t offer details of the flight beyond how many deported Haitians were aboard.
Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flight data, said a plane left Alexandria, Louisiana, a hub for deportation operations, and arrived in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, after a stop in Miami. US citizen Marjorie Dorsaninvil said her Haitian fiancé, Gerson Joseph, called in tears from the Miami airport yesterday morning to say he was being deported on a flight to Cap-Haitien with other Haitians and some from other countries, including the Bahamas. He promised to call when he arrived but hadn’t done so by early evening.
Joseph lived in the US more than 20 years and has a seven-year-old US citizen daughter with another woman. He had a deportation order dating from 2005 after losing an asylum bid that his attorney, Philip Issa, said was a result of poor legal representation at the time. Though Joseph wasn’t deported previously, his lawyer was seeking to have that order overturned.
Joseph was convicted of theft and burglary, and ordered to pay restitution of USD270, Issa said. He has been detained since last year. Dorsaninvil said her fiancé has “nobody” in Haiti. “It is devastating for me. We were planning a wedding and now he is gone,” she said.
