Rushed From Haiti, Then Jailed for Lacking Visas

[alp227]

Nina Bernstein, The New York Times

More than two months after the earthquake that devastated Haiti, at least 30 survivors who were waved onto planes by Marines in the chaotic aftermath are prisoners of the United States immigration system, locked up since their arrival in detention centers in Florida.

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.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/us/01detain.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

[Wilms]

1. "Legal advocates who stumbled on the survivors..."

Sad state.

[aquart]

2. No. SHAMEFUL.

How spectacularly inhumane. After all the cameras on our rescue efforts...WE DO THIS????

[AwakeAtLast]

5. Scary part, "privately operated immigration jail"

That is how they ended up in this mess. Very sad indeed.

[EFerrari]

3. Shameful is right.

[Richard Steele]

4. K&R

[EFerrari]

6. .