Santiago Billy/AP Photo
Guatemalans from one of the first U.S. deportation flights of the year stand with their belongings after deplaning at La Aurora International Airport, in Guatemala City, January 6, 2021.
The day before Joe Biden’s inauguration, President Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has several more deportation flights scheduled. The flights to Haiti, Jamaica, and the West African nation of Mauritania will deport asylum seekers back to their countries of origin, without allowing them access to the American asylum system, advocates say.
“We are hoping that [the flights] will be stopped but we also understand the cruelty of the Trump administration and they’re trying to make this their last show of power,” said Guerline Jozef, co-founder and executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance. “It’s important that people see the cruel and evil deportation machine. We are hopeful and pushing but at this point we also understand the cruelty of the outgoing administration.”
At least one immigrant on the flight to Haiti has never been there, Jozef said. Paul Pierrilus was born in the French territory of St. Martin, but because his parents are Haitian, he’s being deported back to a country he has never seen, where he does not speak the language. Pierrilus’s sister and parents are all U.S. citizens.
Advocates say they are not sure how many asylum seekers are on the flights today because the government has prevented asylum seekers from accessing legal aid or even contacting family members. They see today’s deportation flights of Black immigrants, sandwiched between Martin Luther King Day and Biden’s inauguration, as one last racist attack from the Trump administration.
Houleye Thiam, president of the Mauritanian Network for Human Rights in the U.S., said that she thinks three Mauritanians who are scheduled to be deported today have tested positive for COVID-19. If so, the diagnosis may delay their deportation, as Mauritanian authorities require a negative COVID-19 test. She added that another Black Mauritanian asylum seeker slated to be deported today has tuberculosis.
ICE has not responded to a request for comment on the deportation flights or COVID diagnoses.
“Black Mauritanians … are fleeing to survive, running from a country where Black people are oppressed, enslaved, denied citizenship, attacked, and killed simply for being Black,” Thiam said in a statement. “Before Trump came into office, deportations to Mauritania were rare, in recognition of these horrific conditions. Under Trump, however, our community was suddenly put at the top of the deportation list.”
The Trump administration has doubled the number of Mauritanians deported, compared to the Obama administration. For many Black Mauritanians, deportation means the threat of modern-day slavery and torture. Black Mauritanians are stateless—their government recently stripped their citizenship—and they are an ethnically distinct group who speak a different language from the Arab and Berber majority. The largest Mauritanian community in the U.S. is in Columbus, Ohio, where many have lived for decades with their families.
Last spring, several Haitian asylum seekers deported back to Haiti tested positive for COVID-19 upon arrival. In April 2020, 70 Guatemalan asylum seekers tested positive for COVID-19 upon arrival in Guatemala—92 percent of that deportation flight. The Arizona Republic reported that the flight was just one of many carrying the virus back to a country with little infrastructure to fight it, and may have fueled Guatemala’s coronavirus outbreak. At the time, the country had few cases, while the U.S. had thousands.
Jozef, of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, said that Haitian asylum seekers began arriving at the border in 2016, many fleeing the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 250,000 Haitians and injured another 300,000. At first, surviving Haitians fled to Brazil, hoping to find work around the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. But instead of juicing the Brazilian economy, after the events, Brazil’s economy collapsed. The Haitian migrants were targeted and many fled north, seeking protection again at the American border.
J., who asked not to be identified by his full name, told the Prospect that he was deported back to Jamaica six months ago. He had initially arrived in the U.S. on a visa, fleeing violence in his own country and unaware of how to seek asylum. After a traffic stop in which he was a passenger, he was detained for over a year and contracted COVID-19 while behind bars. “I never thought they would say, ‘Welcome to the U.S.,’ and then they treat you like that,” he said.
He was deported back to Jamaica, leaving behind his American wife, and now fears for his safety. Because of the pandemic, he also can’t find a job to support himself. “It’s very dangerous to send people back to Jamaica,” he said. “No jobs for them, nothing for them, and so what’s going to happen when they come to Jamaica?”
Trump immigration policies such as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), otherwise known as Remain in Mexico, and safe third country agreements with Central American countries have made it harder for Black migrants to seek asylum. Often, asylum seekers from Mauritania, Eritrea, Cameroon, and more will travel through nearly a dozen countries on their way to the southern border. But MPP has forced them to wait in Mexico for their asylum hearing, putting them in danger of violence, extortion, and kidnapping. Safe third country agreements, which require asylum seekers to seek asylum in countries through which they transit, bars asylum seekers from accessing the American asylum system if they haven’t first applied for asylum in Guatemala, for example.
According to BuzzFeed News’ Hamed Aleaziz, Democratic staff in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wrote in a report that “The White House and DHS used coercive tactics to compel the governments of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador to sign the [agreements].”
Advocates are hopeful that Biden’s administration may signal a new approach to immigration. But they plan to hold him accountable, too. “I’m tired and I’m exhausted,” Jozef said. “The Trump administration has implemented, created, and enacted over 400 different rules, policies, and laws that have completely destroyed the immigration system, including bringing down the number of refugees to a bare minimum.”
She continued: “We … are asking the Biden administration to keep their promise and halt deportations during the first day and we will continue to push … to create a fair and just, humane immigration system.”
