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Compassion and Due Process for Haitians
Posted on Sep 22 2021
September 22, 2021—Thousands of desperate Haitian migrants in Del Rio, Texas deserve due process and compassion. The United States has the capacity to give food, water, and shelter to those waiting under a blazing Texas sun. U.S. and international law require us to give a hearing to their pleas for asylum.
Right now, the United States is forcibly expelling these asylum seekers, putting them on flights back to Haiti without allowing them any hearing or due process. U.S. law requires that persons who enter the United States and ask for asylum be given a hearing, not forced back to the country they fled. International law forbids refoulement, which is defined as the forcible return of refugees or asylum seekers to a country where they are liable to be subjected to persecution.
Right now, children and adults sit under a bridge, unsheltered and without adequate water or food. Common human decency demands that we do not let people suffer and die on the doorstep of what is still a nation of plenty.
“The migrants at Del Rio have crossed oceans and mountains and jungles, enduring tremendous hardship and risking their lives to come here,” said Veena Iyer, executive director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. “We must respond with compassion rather than condemnation. We must provide the hearing required by our own laws, not expel people to a suffering country that has no capacity to receive them.”
Just last month, the United States extended Temporary Protected Status to Haitians who arrived in the United States prior to July 29, saying that Haiti was a country “grappling with a deteriorating political crisis, violence, and a staggering increase in human rights abuses.” Haiti, torn by a recent 7.2 level earthquake, by the assassination of its president and continuing disarray of its government, by a growing food crisis, and by a wave of kidnappings and killings, cannot offer even minimal safety to those expelled by the United States.
We can do better. We must do better.