Dear Friend,

By now you may have seen the horrifying conditions facing Haitians and all migrants at the US-Mexico border. White border patrol agents on horseback whip Black migrants. ICE agents detain Haitian children to prepare them for deportation. Construction equipment bulldozes makeshift migrant camps under bridges.

You and I have stood with Haiti in the past. Today, no matter which administration is in power, we must stand in solidarity with Haitians and speak out against this injustice.

The thousands of Haitians at the border are fleeing conditions rooted in decades of US intervention and imperialism. The US government has overthrown democratically elected governments, and at other times supported corrupt, repressive and anti-democratic leaders.1 The US and its corporations have provided so-called “aid” that has flooded the country with cheap foodstuffs from agribusiness and created sweatshop conditions in large industrial parks. And international institutions have dictated reforms that have grabbed land from farming communities, devastated local economies and ancestral lifeways, and kept Haitians in poverty (such as after the 2010 earthquake).

But conditions in the country are even more dire than they have been in decades. The recent assassination of ex-President Jovenel Moïse, the climate of impunity for human rights violations, the 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Southern Haiti, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have set Haiti on a knife’s edge. In his plea for a humanitarian moratorium on expulsions, the director of Haiti’s Office of National Migration stated: “The prospects of welcoming back some 14,000 Haitians in the coming days is more than the country can handle.”

Grassroots International is grateful to stand with so many allies and grantees, including Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, who have taken leadership to put concrete demands on the Biden administration to do the right thing.

This includes demands to halt all Title 42 expulsions and deportations to Haiti, and stop deporting other asylum seekers. Additionally, we support the policy recommendations made by 56 members of Congress to:

• Indefinitely halt deportations to Haiti, release detained Haitians and support administrative closure of removal cases;
• Update the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) “continuous presence” eligibility cut-off date and provide Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) protections;
• Provide humanitarian parole for Haitians arriving at the United States/Mexico Border;
• Reinstate the Haitian Family Reunification Parole Program;
• End barriers to Haitian vaccine distribution

Please join me and thousands of others in standing up for Haitian refugees and their human rights.

In solidarity, Chung-Wha Hong Executive Director