A group of Haitians who landed almost by chance in the US without documents in the chaotic aftermath of the quake were released on Thursday after several weeks in detention.
Some of the Haitians went to the Port-au-Prince airport looking for food, some for work.
Then, amid the chaos, US Marines waved them onto a plane. They were suddenly bound for the US, with no documents or visas.
This is roughly what happened to more than 30 Haitians who found themselves at the international airport right after the Jan. 12 quake, and were promptly locked up on arrival in South Florida.
However, after two-and-a-half months in detention, 32 of the Haitians were released, Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center (FIAC) executive director Cheryl Little said.
Immigrant advocates and lawyers said the group includes mostly unrelated men and women who went to the airport as aid shipments poured in, and saw an unexpected, brief opportunity to leave the devastation.
One of them, for example, was waved onto a plane with family members who were US citizens, to accompany a child.
Many in the group are deeply traumatized, said FIAC statewide director Charu al-Sahli, who has worked closely with detainees.
Al-Sahli said one man lost his three-year-old daughter in the magnitude 7.0 earthquake. Another has had no news of his nine-year-old twins, while a third lost both parents.
“It’s striking to me how many are clearly showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder,” said al-Sahli, adding that one of the detainees has suffered several panic attacks in detention. “It’s been two-and-a-half months that most of these people have been detained. They were waved onto a plane. They committed no criminal act.”
FIAC had been asking the government for several weeks to release the Haitians into the care of relatives who are US citizens.
Ronise Augustin, of Hallandale, in South Florida, said she received a call early on Thursday from her detained brother, Emmanuel Philogene, to say he was about to be released.
“He sounded so happy ... I’m happy he’s going to be with me,” she said.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
RSS