Image / La Razón

By Roberto Morejón

Amid a show of force, thousands of Haitians have been sent back to their homeland by U.S. authorities, in what some call a historic expulsion of migrants. 

Since white border agents marched on horseback in pursuit of mostly Haitian migrants, chaos and overflow characterized the actions of U.S. institutions.

Images of horsemen using whips even against women figure as one of the fiercest responses to a migratory phenomenon that responds to the poverty and violence suffered by the travelers.

Those who, in the midst of extremely high temperatures, managed to evade immigration controls and enter the northern nation expressed astonishment, pain and fear for the outrages.

If today they decreased it was because of the decision of the tenants of the White House to massively deport Haitians.

To the astonishment of the international community, many of those forced to return to Port-au-Prince, even though they came from Latin American countries where they had tried to reside, said that no one had warned them of the fate that awaited them.

The U.S. side defends itself by alleging the pandemic of the new coronavirus and the regulation known as Title 42, implemented by former President Donald Trump in one of his xenophobic outbursts.

The procedure covers summary expulsions of people without verifying their need for protection as recommended by international law. 

It is no secret that Haiti is in a state of upheaval, under the strain of a recent earthquake, which left 2,000 dead, a tropical storm and the political crisis derived from the assassination of President Jovenel Moise and the action of gangs.

The UN estimates that almost 4 million Haitians, out of some 11.5 million, are food insecure and that 2 million people have been forced to emigrate.

None of this is on the table. Despite the Democratic administration's oratory about a lenient procedure towards migrants, the authorities made more than 1,541,000 arrests this year, in contrast to 458,000 in 2020.

And they top that policy with a special forcefulness against Haitians, in a spectacle described by the Democratic legislator Ilhan Omar, a former Somali refugee, as a violation of human rights.