The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will resume deporting Haitians who’ve entered the country illegally, ending a six-year moratorium on deportations following the devastating 2010 natural disaster.
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Jeh Johnson, the secretary of homeland security, said in a statement that conditions in Haiti had “improved sufficiently to permit the US government to remove Haitian nationals on a more regular basis”. By comparison, 339 Haitians without visas arrived at the San Ysidro crossing in the 2015 fiscal year.
Deportations could be hard if Haiti remains reluctant to issue documents needed to take back its residents.
Few have arrived with American visas, but nearly all have been allowed to enter the United States because immigration officials were prohibited, under the modified deportation policy, from using the fast-track removal process often employed at the border for new, undocumented arrivals.
The plans to resume deportations to Haiti come as DHS reported on Wednesday that there could be several thousand more Haitians in Central America and Mexico making their way to the border in hopes of gaining entry to the United States.
Haitians who have been in the United States since January 12, 2011 and have Temporary Protected Status granted to natural disaster victims will not be subject to deportation, Johnson said in a statement.
The news comes just weeks before the country will be redoing their controversial elections, with the country saying they will not accept all nationals being returned.
“The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State are working with the Government of Haiti and other key partners to resume removals in as humane and minimally disruptive a manner as possible”, Johnson said.
Officials from the Department of Homeland Security says those who are in transit and don’t want to return to the nation can go to Brazil, which gave them special residency status in wake of the natural disaster.
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Under previous protections, only Haitians who have been convicted of a serious crime or pose a national security threat have been ordered deported.
