Refugees from Haiti earthquake jailed in US
In Haiti, some were pulled from the rubble, their legal advocates say. Some lost parents, siblings or children. Many were seeking food, safety or medical care at the Port-au-Prince airport when terrifying aftershocks prompted hasty evacuations by military transports, with no time for immigration processing. None have criminal histories.
But when they landed in the United States without visas, they were taken into custody by immigration authorities and held for deportation, even though deportations to Haiti have been suspended indefinitely since the earthquake. Legal advocates who stumbled on the survivors in February at the Broward County Transitional Center, a privately operated immigration jail in Pompano Beach, Fla., have tried for weeks to persuade government officials to release them to citizen relatives who are eager to take them in, letters and affidavits show.
In the chaos right after the earthquake the US Marines brought some refugees over to the US because they had nothing else to do with them. These refugees ended up in the hands of immigration, who took them into custody for not having visas. They remain in jail because we are not deporting people to Haiti right now.
Some really grade A stupidity here, truly exceptional even for US immigration.
Jay