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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://theintercept.com/2021/09/20/biden-haiti-deportations-texas-del-rio/">theintercept.com</a>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Four Months Ago, Biden Said Haiti Wasn’t Safe. Now He’s Deporting Thousands There.</h1>
<div class="gmail-PostByline-names"><a class="gmail-PostByline-link" rel="author" href="https://theintercept.com/staff/natasha-lennard/"><span>Natasha Lennard</span></a><span class="gmail-PostByline-date"><span> - September 20 2021</span></span>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><div><p><a href="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2021/09/AP21263189267954-migrants-haitian-crossing-border.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90"><img src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2021/09/AP21263189267954-migrants-haitian-crossing-border.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90" alt="AP21263189267954-migrants-haitian-crossing-border" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="436" height="291"></a></p><p class="gmail-caption">Migrants,
many from Haiti, wade across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, Texas, to
return to Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, late Sunday, Sept. 19, 2021, to avoid
deportation to Haiti from the U.S.</p>
<p class="gmail-caption">
Photo: AP Photo/Félix Márquez</p></div><div><p><u>Just four months ago,</u> the Department of Homeland Security <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2021/05/22/secretary-mayorkas-designates-haiti-temporary-protected-status-18-months">designated</a>
Haiti for temporary protected status. The rare designation applies to
immigrants in the United States who are temporarily unable to safely
return to their home country because of conditions of extreme political
upheaval, conflict, or natural disasters. The U.S. government thus
asserted, in no uncertain terms, that Haiti was not a safe
place. Temporary protected status was <a href="https://www.natlawreview.com/article/haiti-tps-extended-through-february-3-2023">extended and expanded </a>for Haitians just five weeks ago.</p>
<p>Yet in the last 24 hours, 320 Haitians were placed on planes by the Biden administration and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-mexico-texas-caribbean-immigration-56f1f0093039e2a43e128b7ef0015485">expelled</a>
back to Haiti, having been removed from the huge border camp that has
amassed around a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Six more flights are expected
to land in Haiti on Tuesday, and then as many as 10 per day from
Wednesday onward. Around 14,000 Haitians will be expelled from the U.S.
over the coming three weeks — almost the exact number currently gathered
at the Del Rio encampment.</p></div><blockquote><span></span><p>Around
14,000 Haitians will be expelled from the U.S. over the coming three
weeks — almost the exact number currently gathered at the Del Rio
encampment.</p></blockquote><div><p>The Biden
administration is expelling thousands of people to a country officially
recognized as unsafe for repatriation. It is a deportation operation of
scale and speed not seen in decades. And it gives the lie to any notion
that President Joe Biden’s border regime is kinder than that of former
President Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Trump and his ghoulish allies framed their brutal border policies in
unabashed racist rhetoric and white supremacist fearmongering. Like
Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/clinton-and-obama-laid-the-groundwork-for-donald-trumps-war-on-immigrants/">before him</a>, Biden shrouds his anti-immigrant policies in empty <a href="https://joebiden.com/immigration/">liberal overtures</a>.
The necropolitical border logics are nonetheless the same; the
suffering of those denied safety in this country — which could well
provide it — is no different, whether enforced by an alleged “friend” to
immigrants or an explicit white nationalist.</p></div><div><p>“The Biden Administration doesn’t get to be both an ally of immigrant communities and an active oppressor,” <a href="https://twitter.com/UndocuBlack/status/1438590878239633408">wrote</a>
the UndocuBlack Network, a community of currently and formerly
undocumented Black advocates, on Twitter. “And the daughter of
immigrants Kamala” — Harris, the vice president — “doesn’t get to use
her immigrant ties to get our support for her election but then play
bystander to our plight.”</p>
<p>UndocuBlack ended the tweet with the hashtag #BidenAlsoDeports, which
has been gaining traction among those trying to draw attention to the
brutality of the administration’s mass deportation of Haitians.</p>
<p>Longtime immigrant rights activists will be unsurprised by the fact
of a Democratic administration’s inhumanity when it comes to border
rule. <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/07/06/migration-open-borders-deterrence-mass-murder/">Genocidal policies</a> of so-called <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/05/04/no-more-deaths-scott-warren-migrants-border-arizona/">deterrence</a>
in the name of border “security” are a rare point of bipartisan
agreement, whether or not Democrats admit it. Foul Trumpian treatment of
immigrants at the border was cited as key proof of his administration’s
racist cruelty. The same, then, must apply to Biden’s actions.</p></div><div><p><a href="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2021/09/GettyImages-1235366682-border-patrol-agent-horseback-whips-haitian-migrant-encampment-del-rio.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90"><img src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2021/09/GettyImages-1235366682-border-patrol-agent-horseback-whips-haitian-migrant-encampment-del-rio.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90" alt="TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-IMMIGRATION-TEXAS" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="436" height="303"></a></p><p class="gmail-caption">A
U.S. Border Patrol agent on horseback tries to stop a Haitian migrant
from entering an encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande near the
international bridge in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 19, 2021.</p>
<p class="gmail-caption">
Photo: Paul Ratje/AFP via Getty Images</p></div><div><p><u>Photographs taken over</u> the weekend <a href="https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1439763779688882180?s=20">show</a>
U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback violently grabbing Haitian
migrants attempting to join the Del Rio encampment. This, the Biden
administration claims, is in the name of safety: The mass deportations
have been authorized under the Centers for Disease Control’s <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-17/biden-administration-appeals-judge-order-to-stop-expelling-migrants-under-public-health-law">Title 42</a>,
which enables expedited deportations in the name of public health
during the Covid-19 pandemic. Under Trump, nearly half a million people
were removed under the law; the Biden administration has already used it
to deport nearly 700,000.</p>
<p>Its use against migrants at the southern border sends a clear and
vile message as to whom the U.S. deems to be the public, deserving of
health and safety. Under Title 42 — in the name of safety, that is —
those being rounded up and flown to Haiti were given no option to apply
for asylum or temporary protection status.</p>
<p>It is worth emphasizing, too, that the majority of deportees have not
lived in Haiti for many years, having left to find work in South
America after a catastrophic hurricane devastated their home country in
2010. Struggling to find enough work to survive in South America,
thousands risked perilous journeys to the U.S. border, only to be
summarily removed — to Haiti.</p>
<p>“I’m scared,” Gary Monplaisir, a 26-year-old Haitian man, who had
traveled from Chile to the U.S. border with his wife and 5-year-old
daughter and who now faces imminent removal to Haiti, told The
Associated Press. “I don’t have a plan.” He has not lived in Haiti for
four years, and reaching family in Port-au-Prince would require crossing
a gang-controlled area, where killings are common.</p></div><p><a href="https://theintercept.com/collections/the-war-on-immigrants/"><span><span><img alt="The War on Immigrants" src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149-promo.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&fit=crop&w=440&h=220" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="436" height="218"></span></span><span><span></span></span></a></p><div><p>Secretary
of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas announced the new designation
of Haiti for temporary protected status in May. “Haiti is currently
experiencing serious security concerns, social unrest, an increase in
human rights abuses, crippling poverty, and lack of basic resources,
which are exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said. “After careful
consideration, we determined that we must do what we can to support
Haitian nationals in the United States until conditions in Haiti improve
so they may safely return home.”</p>
<p>Conditions have not improved, and yet a mass deportation of historic
size to the beleaguered Caribbean nation continues at extraordinary
pace. Haiti remains beset by the aftermath of another devastating
hurricane, gang warfare, and an acute political crisis — for which
centuries of white supremacist U.S. oppression and intervention bares
considerable historic blame. As The Intercept’s Ryan Devereaux <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/07/26/colombian-mercenaries-haiti-jovenel-moise-assassination/">reported</a>,
the July assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse, which
plunged the country into political disarray, involved U.S.-trained
Colombian mercenaries. It is another great, unbroken American tradition:
to destabilize foreign nations and then forego all obligations to the
mass migrations that the U.S. helped produce.</p>
<p>“We are in utter disbelief that the Biden Administration would deport
Haitians now. Hours after the 7.2 magnitude earthquake, President Joe
Biden released a statement saying that the United States was a ‘friend’
of Haiti. A ‘friend’ does not continuously inflict pain on another
friend,” Guerline Jozef, co-founder and executive director of the
Haitian Bridge Alliance, said in a statement. “Just one month after this
devastating earthquake and storm that resulted in the deaths of over
2,200 Haitians, injured 12,000 people, damaged or destroyed 120,000
homes and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, the Administration
sent a plane full of families to Haiti under Title 42, including
children under the age of three, without offering them legal protection
and the opportunity to file for asylum.”</p></div><div><div><p><img alt="Haiti US Deported" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-uploads/sites/1/2021/09/AP21262676531840-deportations-haiti-migrants.jpg" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="436" height="282"></p><p><img alt="Haiti US Deported" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-uploads/sites/1/2021/09/AP21262753212109-haiti-deported-migrants.jpg" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="436" height="286"></p></div><p><span>Haitians,
deported from the United States, deplane at the Toussaint Louverture
International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Sept. 19, 2021.</span><span>Photos: Joseph Odelyn/AP</span></p></div><p><u>Last Thursday,</u> a federal judge <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/17/biden-administration-appeals-order-to-stop-expelling-migrants-under-trump-era-covid-policy.html">ruled</a>
that the government must stop using Title 42 as a grounds to expel
migrants. The Biden administration is so keen to keep using the public
health law and denying people’s right to seek asylum in the U.S. that it
has already appealed the order. The ruling, if not overturned, gave the
government two weeks before it must end the use of the law for
expulsions — little wonder that the U.S. is rushing to expel as many
Haitian refugees as possible at breakneck speed.</p><div><p>Meanwhile,
the Biden administration continues to frame the mass deportations in
humanitarian terms. “We are working around the clock to expeditiously
move migrants out of the heat, elements, and from underneath this bridge
to our processing facilities in order to quickly process and remove
individuals from the United States consistent with our laws and our
policies,” <a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-mexico-texas-caribbean-immigration-56f1f0093039e2a43e128b7ef0015485">said</a>
Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz at a Sunday news conference at the Del
Rio bridge. As if removal to Haiti were the only option in the face of
the humanitarian crisis; as if the wealthiest nation in the world could
not <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/07/06/migration-open-borders-deterrence-mass-murder/">well accommodate</a>
millions of migrants seeking safety and a better life. Instead,
exclusionary border logic prevails as if it were a transcendental truth.</p>
<p>There’s no doubt that the crisis at the border presents a challenge
and a political minefield for Biden. The population of Del Rio is only
35,000, and the border encampment grew to nearly half that size. In such
circumstances, Republican racist, paranoiac claims flourish about a
“great replacement” of white Americans by brown and Black migrants.
Indeed, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was swift to take <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1438704128037900289">footage</a>
of the inhumane conditions at the encampment and blame Democrats for
bringing migrants to the border in great and allegedly unmanageable
numbers.</p></div><blockquote><span></span><p>It
is both political folly, as well as moral turpitude, for Democrats to
bend even further rightward on immigration in an attempt to satiate the
insatiable.</p></blockquote><div><p>The encampment is
a humanitarian disaster, but it is also a political nightmare for the
Biden administration. The only option is not, however, to clear the camp
through inhumane expulsions and far-right appeasement. Republicans will
misleadingly frame Biden as advocating for open borders, regardless of
how harsh and anti-immigrant his policies remain. It is both political
folly, as well as moral turpitude, for Democrats to bend even further
rightward on immigration in an attempt to satiate the insatiable.</p>
<p>If the political hit is coming anyway, as it is, the way forward is
clear. There is no doubt that the men, women, and children gathered at
the border in intolerable conditions — hungry, unsheltered, and harassed
by law enforcement — should not be there. They should be swiftly aided
in their entry to this country.</p></div></div></div></div>
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