Haitians Held on Ship as U.S. Reviews Policy

While the Bush Administration ponders what immigration policy to take toward a Haiti under military rule, 19 refugees from that impoverished nation spent their eighth day at sea Tuesday, caught in high seas political limbo.

The 19 are the first Haitian refugees interdicted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard since the Sept. 30 coup that ousted elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. They are being held aboard the cutter Steadfast, which is idling some 20 miles off the Haitian coast.

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department is “evaluating the situation,” one official who declined to be identified said Tuesday. “We are not going to return them (to Haiti) until we are sure the situation is safe,” this official said. “They are being taken care of. There are places for them, and I would assume they are perfectly safe on the ship. It’s not a tiny, rickety boat. It’s a Coast Guard vessel.”

The State Department spokesman estimated the 19 would remain on the ship “a few more days, I would think, at a minimum.”

The refugees pose a dilemma for the Administration, which had been considering a relaxation in its hard-line immigration policy toward Haiti in the wake of the coup and the turmoil that has ensued. However, as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Bernard Aronson told a congressional subcommittee last Thursday, “The wrong signal could lead to a great number of people trying to come to South Florida at great risk.”

Usually, Haitians en route to the United States are interviewed aboard ship and almost always are returned to Port-au-Prince after their reasons for requesting political asylum are deemed insufficient. In the past 10 years, only 28 of some 24,000 Haitian refugees picked up at sea have been allowed to enter the United States, according to Leon Jennings, chief of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service interdiction program in Miami.

Of those 28, only about four or five have been granted political asylum, Jennings said.

Times staff writer Jim Mann in Washington contributed to this story.