Border czar Tom Homan defended the Trump administration’s recent deportations to Haiti on Sunday, even as the State Department warns Americans not to travel to the Caribbean nation “for any reason.” During an interview on CNN, host Dana Bash asked Homan about two deportation flights to Haiti over the past two weeks. The flights came after the Supreme Court allowed the administration to end Temporary Protected Status for Haiti in June, making roughly 350,000 Haitians who were permitted to live and work in the U.S. vulnerable to arrest and removal from the country. Bash noted that Ambassador Jennifer Locetta, a Trump administration official and the U.S. emissary to the United Nations for political affairs, had described conditions in Haiti as “dire” earlier this week.
Homan complained that TPS appeared to be “never temporary” and noted that the Supreme Court had allowed termination in June. In a third attempt to elicit a different response, Bash asked whether Homan, “as a human,” felt comfortable sending people back to a country ravaged by violence. I’ve never been to Haiti.
I don’t know if you have. But look, the judge made a decision ... and they need to go home.” “We’re just enforcing the law,” Homan added. Haiti, which shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, is in the midst of a severe political and humanitarian crisis.
Armed gangs control or contest large parts of Port-au-Prince, the capital, while the government struggles to maintain order. Recently, 47 people were killed in a gang attack in Kenscoff, a farming community. Among those killed was a 70-year-old man whose body was set alight by gang members.
Nearly 1.5 million people have been displaced across Haiti in recent years, in a country with a population of about 12 million. More than 3,000 people were killed between January and June, according to the United Nations. Amidst the unrest, deportations to Haiti are expected to increase, with flights scheduled to expand from once a month to once a week, The New York Times reported this week.
About 200 people were deported to Haiti on two separate flights over the past two weeks, according to the Trump administration and a human rights group. The United States must halt deportation flights to Haiti and provide protection for Haitians in the United States until it is safe for people to return.” The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, has promoted the deportation flights. In a recent update headlined “HOME SWEET HAITI,” the agency said a flight on August 20 carried 162 immigrants — including “pedophiles, gang members, drug traffickers, and violent assailants” — back to Haiti.
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