The never-ending Haitian migrant crisis

In the second half of September, thousands of people were living in a temporary and improvised camp situated under a bridge that connects Del Rio, Texas, and Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. Now, the encampment has been completely cleared. Out of 15,000 of the displaced, the majority were Haitian migrants. This disproportionate number is not an accident: the surge of Haitians in the United States was derived from intertwining historical, political and morphological factors. According to the 2020 Human Development Index (HDI), Haiti ranks 170 out of 189 countries, making it the poorest country of the Latin America/Caribbean region. The main historical cause is traced back to the country’s colonial past.

From 1492 until the beginning of the XIX century, Haiti was a French colony whose soil has been intensively exploited to cultivate coffee and sugar. As a result, today, large parts of the soil are completely infertile. Moreover, the island’s independence, declared in 1804, entailed significantly high monetary costs, which corresponded to the amount of money requested by France to grant the diplomatic status of a newborn independent country. Since then, the state has been characterized by permanent political instability and, consequently, military foreign intervention.

The last major intervention occurred from 2004 to 2017 and was a UN peacekeeping mission, called the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti. The consequence of the 13 years long occupation was devastating: a cholera epidemic caused by the poisoning of the Artibonite river ascribed to an American base killed almost 10,000 inhabitants.

The country’s morphological conformation also contributed to worsening living standards. For instance, Haiti was subject to two ruinous earthquakes in January 2010 and in August 2021, and to Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Lastly, the July 2021 murder of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse plunged the country into political turmoil. Political instability fosters its social equivalent, which, already characterized by the widespread presence of criminal gangs, is now dominated by a dichotomy of popular opinions concerning political succession.

Natural disasters, political uncertainty and a population mostly under the national poverty line of USD 2.41 per day are the main factors that piled up to generate huge migration waves. Furthermore, the United States’ influence on the country has been ubiquitous in the last century, such that Haiti is often defined as an American protectorate. Therefore, the migratory phenomenon is not ascribed to the events of 2021 alone: according to the US Census of 2019, Florida was inhabited by 356,358 Haitians, 1.66 percent of its population. Hence, Haitian migrants are not a novelty for the US government, which in May 2021 had, in fact, announced a new Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for 150,000 Haitians living temporarily in the United States. Nonetheless, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas stated at the end of September that this pronouncement has been misinterpreted. For instance, its immediate consequence was a massive wave of Haitians spilling over into the United States, confident that the Biden administration would have welcomed them. This was not the case.

In September, nearly 30,000 migrants undertook a perilous and strenuous journey, starting from disparate departure points. More than half of them shared a common ground: being Haitian nationals. However, a meaningful number had been living in various Latin American countries, such as Panama, Chile, and Brazil, and some of them were not even familiar with their motherland. They all eventually amassed in Del Rio, building a temporary encampment under a bridge. After some days of hesitation, US authorities took the drastic decision to clear the encampment, by first apprehending and then repatriating its inhabitants.

On the 19th of September, the first three flights landed in Port-au Prince, the Haitian capital, and the rhythm of repatriates have progressively intensified. Unlike what was promised, these operations did not run smoothly. For instance, once deported to the island, Haitian migrants denounced, along with the excessive use of violence, the indecent and inadequate conditions of the detainee centers, and, above all, the widespread abuse of deception.

Various directly involved witnesses reported having been told that they would have been relocated in less crowded detention camps in Florida. Instead, the next thing they saw was Port-au Prince’s airport. Moreover, none of the returnees underwent interviews or formal identifications. As a result, Nicodeme Vyles, a 45-year-old man who had been living in Panama since 2003 found himself in Haiti, a country in which he had no home, no bank account, and no family.

The events of this September must be placed into a broader framework. Thanks to empirical data, it has emerged that every presidential administration since the 1970s has treated Haitians differently than other migrant groups, holding them longer in detention and rejecting their asylum claims. A not negligible precedent is the Guantanamo case of the 1990s, which saw 12,000 Haitian migrants detained indefinitely in the famous prison.

In the last month, images of the US Border Patrol on horseback, using the reins as whips while chasing migrants in Del Rio, shocked the global West. However, the main reason was often not compassion, but genuine surprise: the popular expectations towards the Biden administration concerning immigration policies were different. For instance, the president’s promise of discontinuity with the Trumpian past seems to be jeopardized by the incorrect and unfair procedures of repatriation, and by the lack of altruism towards a heavily burdened country that is not able to welcome 15,000 migrants.

- Margherita Cordellini