Court Upholds Order Keeping U.S. From Returning Haitians

A federal appeals court Friday upheld an emergency restraining order that has stopped the Bush Administration from repatriating thousands of Haitians who have fled their impoverished land in sailboats.

The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta also ruled that attorneys for the Haitians could interview the refugees, being held at sea on 15 Coast Guard cutters and at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The interviews could help determine whether the Haitians might qualify as political refugees. Cheryl Little, an attorney for Miami’s Haitian Refugee Center, described the two rulings as a victory, but added, “I am sure the government will continue appealing to prevent us access to ships and Haitians, while scrambling to find third countries to take them.”

She said she and other lawyers would travel to the ships, crammed with more than 1,000 Haitians refugees, as soon as today.

Meanwhile, off Cuba’s eastern coast, rescuers Friday recovered more bodies from a boat that capsized late Tuesday in rough waters with 200 Haitians aboard. Prensa Latina, the Cuban news agency, reported that 75 bodies had been recovered, 60 others are missing and presumed dead, and 60 were rescued.

U.S. government lawyers said the drownings lent weight to their arguments that the court order preventing the return of interdicted Haitians impaired the Coast Guard’s ability to rescue refugees in trouble and could lead to even more deaths. “The tragic life-and-death events which are transpiring at this very moment . . . are exacerbated by the District Court’s misguided interference,” said Justice Department attorneys.

Ira J. Kurzban, an attorney for the Haitian Refugee Center, dismissed that argument. “They are letting people drown out there instead of doing what they should be doing: get some planes down there, fly those people from Guantanamo to the U.S.”

Early Friday, the cutter Confidence picked up 246 Haitians crammed into a 30-foot boat. A few hours earlier the cutter Dallas rescued 47 others who were in an even smaller boat with a cracked hull. “It’s worse than sardines,” said Petty Officer Roger Wetherell.

The number of Haitian refugees picked up by the Coast Guard since Oct. 29--shortly after the Organization of American States imposed strict economic trade sanctions against Haiti--stood at 3,138 on Friday. More than 1,000 remain camped on the decks of 15 Coast Guard cutters sent to deal with the crisis off Haiti’s north shore. About 1,500 have been removed from ships and taken to the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay. Of those, 53 have been brought to Miami to pursue asylum claims. Others have been repatriated or moved to temporary camps in Honduras and Venezuela.