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Over 120 Nonprofit Organizations and Advocates Urge Biden to End Deportations to Haiti

Kalle Noble

Press Release For Immediate Release

Black Alliance for Just Immigration

Contact: Nekessa Opoti

Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law

Contact: Peter Schey

Two weeks after the U.N. approved multinational armed force intervention in Haiti, over one-hundred and fifty organizations and advocates sent a letter to President Biden urging his Administration to stop all deportation to Haiti and to stop interdicting Haitian refugees who flee the country by boat. Gangs have taken over much of the country, leaving Haitian communities displaced, without access to food, water, hospitals, or education and subject to extreme violence as gangs battle to occupy more territory.

 

At a recent Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Hearing focused on the intersection of race and migration, Legal Director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) Tsion Gurmu said that “Black migrants face racist immigration laws and policies globally, and particularly acutely in the Americas. Yet, our experiences have been systematically disregarded and our communities silenced. We are witnessing an increasing externalization of borders as the primary means to regulate migration which in turn disproportionately impacts the movement of Black migrants, fuels anti-Black racism and racial profiling, and turns borders into sites of criminalization and dehumanization.”

 

Executive Director of BAJI, Nana Gyamfi, pointed out that “Reports of plane loads of migrants forced to return to Haiti, evocative photographs of migrant camps at Del Rio, the Texas border town on the Rio Grande, and graphic images of Black migrants pursued and rounded up by U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback, are exactly what the Biden campaign pledged to consign to the past when it promised to ‘undo the moral and national shame’ of the previous administration.”

 

Brian Concannon, founder of Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), explains that progress toward democracy and stability in Haiti cannot be made until the U.S. stops propping up the illegitimate government of Ariel Henry - and gives “Haitians, who understand their context much better than people in the United States,” the chance to rebuild their country. “The problem remains the administration’s failed foreign policy towards Haiti, which by propping up the corrupt regime and blocking democracy is responsible for Haiti’s unprecedentedly hellish conditions,” said Steve Forester, IJDH Immigration Policy Coordinator. “Until that policy finally changes, many Haitians will unfortunately likely continue to risk their lives in desperate attempts to save them.”

President of Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law (CHRCL) Peter Schey has long been advocating for protections for Haitian refugees and asylum seekers in the U.S. In 1980, he worked with Ira Kurzban, Rick Swartz, and Steven Forester on a district court case called Haitian Refugee Center v. Civiletti that resulted in an injunction blocking thousands of deportations to Haiti, later upheld in the Fifth Circuit. In 1997, he won a ruling by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights finding that the interdiction program that turns away thousands of Haitian people who arrive at the U.S. coast after perilous journeys by boat violates the “right to life” under international law. “The continued interdiction of Haitians who have made perilous journeys on makeshift boats and finally reached the U.S. shore, as well as the cruel U.S. Coast Guard practice of capturing and turning back boats outside the Haiti border is a violation of domestic and international law and an egregious human rights violation.”

Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) is the largest Black-led social justice organization representing the nearly 10 million Black immigrants, refugees, and families living in the U.S. BAJI fights for the rights of Black migrants and African Americans through organizing, legal advocacy, research, policy, and narrative building to improve the conditions of Black communities by advancing racial justice and migrant rights. 

Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) is a partnership of human rights advocates in Haiti and the U.S., dedicated to tackling the root causes of injustice that impacts basic human rights in Haiti and supporting the Haitian people in their grassroots struggle for social justice and democratic government.

The Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law (CHRCL) provides training and support to California legal service providers and works towards immigrant justice through class action litigation and advocacy.

On October 25, 2023, BAJI, IJDH, and CHRCL, joined by over 150 organizations and advocates, sent the following letter to President Biden.

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