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When Evens Delva crossed the Rio Grande with his wife and two daughters, he dreamed of starting a new life in Florida. But less than a week later, he and his family walked the tarmac in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s sweltering and chaotic capital, with nothing but traumatic memories and a sense of seething anger.
Delva, along with nearly 2,000 other Haitians, was deported from south Texas this week to Haiti, although he has lived in Chile for the past six years and has little connection to his home country. . His youngest daughter, who is four years old, does not have Haitian nationality, having been born in Chile, and speaks more Spanish than Haitian Creole.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do, we have nowhere to stay or no one to call,” said the 40-year-old, moments after stepping off the plane in the scorching midday Caribbean heat. . “All I know is this is the last place I want to be.”
It’s not hard to see why. Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is mired in overlapping crises. Gasoline shortages and blackouts are a daily reality, as warring gangs regularly kidnap for ransom and fight in the streets.
The grim situation only worsened when President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in his home on July 7, sparking a struggle for political power and further instability and street violence. On August 14, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the poor southern peninsula, killing more than 2,200 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless.
The Biden administration’s decision to expel thousands of Haitians under such circumstances sparked stigma around the world and prompted the US envoy to Haiti to resign in protest. Haiti is “a country where American officials are confined in secure complexes because of the danger posed by armed gangs controlling daily life,” he wrote in his resignation letter. “The increase in migration to our borders will only increase as we add to Haiti’s unacceptable misery. “
Last week, the world was shocked by images of mounted police charging desperate Haitian migrants near a camp of 12,000 people under the Del Río-Ciudad Acuña international bridge. Delva was on his way to buy food and water for his family when the cavalry charge sent him and dozens of his compatriots running in a frenzy.
“We were rounded up like cattle and shackled like criminals,” he said, after spending the six-hour flight from San Antonio with hands and legs tied.
“They treated us like animals,” added Maria, his wife. “We will never forget how we felt.”
US authorities were so sloppy in their swift deportation of the migrants that they also swept aside an Angolan man who had never set foot in Haiti. “I told them I am not Haitian,” Belone Mpembele said as he dazedly exited the terminal. “But they didn’t listen.”
Outside the airport, a few dozen deported Haitians waited, restless and angry, for any help. “Screw Biden!” A deportee shouted as a scuffle broke out between two motorcycle taxi drivers scrambling for customers and plumes of rancid white smoke rose from a nearby burning garbage pile.
The new arrivals each received approximately $ 50 in cash as well as a hygiene kit that included toilet paper, soap and toothbrushes, featuring the USAID logo and slogan: “A Gift from the American People.” .
“This is my country and I’m not afraid of it, but there is no future here, even if you want to work,” said Fanfan Clerveaux, who had been sleeping with a cousin nearby since he arrived there. a few days ago. “But I don’t know why they had to kick us out like that.”
The vast majority of those deported had lived in Chile and Brazil for several years following an earthquake in 2010 that flattened much of Port-au-Prince, killing more than 200,000 people and plunging Haiti into a state of disaster. spiral of instability from which he never recovered. .
Those who reached South America set out to rebuild their lives, but when the coronavirus pandemic hit it wiped out much of the jobs of the middle and working class in Latin America, and they left again found in poverty.
Many Haitians have decided to head to the United States. The long drive north exposes them to bandits, traffickers and immigration agents preying on migrants. Perhaps the worst part of the trip is the dreaded Darién Gap, a lawless mountainous jungle area between Colombia and Panama. “The corpses, there are so many corpses, and the rivers just ate people alive,” Delva said. “And thieves, just rob everyone.”
After the final flight of the day arrived, a young woman fought against a crowd of taxi drivers and burst into tears when she saw her mother, who was estranged from her in Texas. “You are here!” Further on, a driver listened to the news on the radio and heard about another kidnapping in the capital, as the Delva family began to cram into a battered sedan.
“I don’t know if Biden knows what happened to us, but they treated us like private property,” Delva said. Despite the trauma of their long journey, he was certain of one thing: his family’s future was not in Haiti. “We will stay here for about a month and then try to leave. “
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