US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Monday deported at least 72 people to Haiti, including a two-month-old baby and 21 other children, in an apparent flagrant breach of orders by US President Joe Biden’s administration only to remove suspected terrorists and potentially dangerous convicted felons.
The children were deported to Haiti on two flights chartered by ICE from Laredo, Texas, to the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince. The removals sent vulnerable infants back to Haiti as it is being roiled by major political unrest.
ICE is facing a rising chorus of denunciation as a “rogue agency” for its apparent refusal to abide by the new guidelines laid down by Biden and US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.
Photo: Reuters
The Biden administration ordered a 100-day moratorium on all deportations, which was temporarily blocked by a judge in Texas. However, the judge’s restraining order left in place the new guidelines stipulating that only the most serious immigration cases should be subject to deportation.
The administration appeared to gain the upper hand in its attempt to rein in ICE on Friday. when deportation flights to Haiti were suspended. However, on Monday, the immigration agency reasserted itself again with the renewed flights to Port-au-Prince, children and infants on board.
Human rights campaigners are dismayed by the deportations, which bear a close resemblance to the hardline course set by former US president Donald Trump.
“It is unconscionable for us as a country to continue with the same draconian, cruel policies that were pursued by the Trump administration,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the immigration support group the Haitian Bridge Alliance.
“I don’t know what’s going on between ICE and the Biden administration, but we know what needs to be done: The deportations must stop,” she said.
Immigration advisers are especially concerned about the safety of the Haitian children deported, as they are being returned to a country that is embroiled in rapidly mounting political turmoil.
Haitian President Jovenel Moise is refusing to heed opposition calls for him to step down in a dispute over the end of his term — his detractors say he should have left office on Sunday.
Moise has been ruling by decree for more than a year and has recently cracked down on public protests. On Sunday, the day that opponents urged him to stand down, he announced the arrests of 23 people, including a supreme court justice and a senior police inspector whom he claimed were plotting a coup against him.
Two Haitian journalists were reportedly shot with live ammunition fired by the armed forces on Monday in volatile scenes in the Champ de Mars in Port-au-Prince.
The Biden administration has stoked further controversy by backing Moise in the dispute. The US government has announced it takes the view that the Haitian president has another year to run before he must leave office.
Jozef said it was not safe to return children to this environment.
“I fear for the kids being sent into the middle of this uprising. It’s as if there is a house burning, and instead of taking people out for their own safety the United States is sending defenseless babies into the burning house,” she said.
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
It turns out that looming collision between our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might not happen after all. Astronomers on Monday said that the probability of the two spiral galaxies colliding is less than previously thought, with a 50-50 chance within the next 10 billion years. That is essentially a coin flip, but still better odds than previous estimates and farther out in time. “As it stands, proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy seem greatly exaggerated,” the Finnish-led team wrote in a study appearing in Nature Astronomy. While good news for the Milky Way galaxy, the latest forecast might be moot
RSS