Immigration officials sent dozens of Haitians back to their homeland Thursday in the U.S. government’s first deportation flight in months to the country, which has been gripped by widespread violence, according to three government officials.
Deportation flights are generally seen as a way to deter migrants from crossing the southern border without permission. The United States is concerned about migration from Haiti after a gang takeover of the capital Port-au-Prince led to the planned resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry this year.
The deportation flight, the first since January, comes as the Biden administration continues to focus on tightening measures at the southern border as a way to reduce the number of migrants entering the country without authorization. President Biden has faced intense scrutiny from Republicans over the border, and immigration has become a key issue in the election campaign.
However, in recent months, migrants have been crossing the border less quickly than before.
Still, Thursday’s deportation flight caught many immigrant advocacy groups by surprise. The U.S. government itself is advising Americans not to visit Haiti, citing “kidnapping, crime, civil unrest and poor health care infrastructure,” and has previously ordered relatives of U.S. officials in Haiti to leave.
“Not only is this morally wrong and contrary to U.S. and international law, it is simply bad foreign policy,” said Guerline Jozef, head of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, an advocacy group in San Diego.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it had “conducted a repatriation flight of approximately 50 Haitian nationals to Haiti.”
The statement continued: “Individuals will only be removed if it is determined that they have no legal basis to remain in the United States.”
The United Nations human rights office said in March that more than 1,500 people have been killed in gang violence in Haiti so far this year, describing the country as in a “disastrous situation.”
The Biden administration granted temporary protection from deportation to Haitians who entered the United States before the end of 2022 due to the ongoing problems in Haiti.
Some congressional Democrats, including Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, have urged the administration to extend these protections to Haitians who have entered the country since 2022 and maintain the pause on deportation flights to Haiti.
Word that the deportations had restarted brought denunciations from other House Democrats. “Given the current dangers and the lack of a central government, we should not deport people to Haiti. Period,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington said on social media.
Adam Isaacson of the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group, said Haitians were mainly waiting for appointments at ports of entry to enter the United States through a government app, as the government has encouraged, rather than crossing the border .
“It is difficult to explain the urgency of deporting Haitians,” he said in a text message. “Among nationalities whose citizens have crossed the border illegally, Haiti was the 15th nationality in the past six months, far behind China, India and even Turkey.”
Thomas Cartwright, who tracks government deportation flights for Witness at the Border, an advocacy group, said there have been no commercial flights into Port-au-Prince airport recently. Last month, gunfire broke out around that airport.
This week the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the airport in the Haitian capital had closed, but “limited” flights had restarted to two other airports in the country.
U.S. officials deported the Haitians on Thursday to one of those airports, in Cap Haitien, a coastal city a few hours’ drive north of the capital. Mr. Cartwright said the United States typically flies deported migrants to the capital, although it operated some flights to Cap Haitien in 2021.