Haitian activists demand halt to deportations as gang violence and poverty soar

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AP) — Haitian activists on Thursday demanded that other countries temporarily stop deportations to their country due to a surge in gang violence and deepening poverty.

Tens of thousands of people have been deported to Haiti in the past month, mostly from the Dominican Republic, whose president recently pledged to deport some 10,000 migrants a week. The Caribbean country, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, has deported nearly 61,000 migrants to Haiti in the past month, according to the latest government figures. In October, the U.S. deported 258 Haitians, while Turks & Caicos, Jamaica and the Bahamas deported a combined total of 231, according to Sam Guillaume, a spokesperson for Haiti’s Support Group for Returnees and Refugees. He noted that many of those deported to Haiti remain homeless. “A lot of them can’t make it back home because their neighborhood is controlled by gangs,” he said. As a result, some deportees are temporarily living along Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic in hopes of crossing again.

Gangs now control 85% of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and gunmen have been relentless in attacking once peaceful communities. The deportees now join the more than 700,000 people left homeless by gang violence in recent years. Among that group are more than 12,000 who fled neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince following attacks last month, according to the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration. Those held for deportation in the Dominican Republic are being forced into crowded jails with no water, no food and no beds, and when they defend their rights, they are sometimes tear-gassed, Guillaume said. “People are being treated like criminals,” he said. He added that some organizations helping Haitians in the Dominican Republic also are being attacked.