U.S. Returns 1st 38 Refugees Directly to Haiti

Vilson Destine was confused and afraid when he walked slowly off the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Escanaba here Tuesday morning. Instead of the good life of Miami, he was back in Haiti.

The 20-year-old Destine, who is from the famine-stricken city of Gonaives, and 37 others made up the first group of Haitian boat people brought here under a new executive order by President Bush requiring the Coast Guard to pluck them from the sea and return them without considering any request for refugee status.

Destine had abandoned his wife and 2-year-old son last Thursday after paying $20 for passage on a homemade sailboat carrying him and 19 others toward Miami. He was seeking, along with thousands of others, to escape the economic and political misery afflicting this tiny country since a Sept. 30 coup overthrew the elected government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

“I had to go,” he said. “There was no work and no food. I haven’t had any work since the embargo”--a reference to the American and hemispheric economic boycott established to force the current military-backed regime to restore Aristide to office.

“We are very happy to be rescued,” Destine said as he waited for a Red Cross bus at the Port-au-Prince dock. “But this is not what we were looking for.”

At the minimum, he had hoped to be picked up and taken to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where past refugees have been quartered while their claims for political refugee status are processed.

At the most, he was counting on a new Coast Guard directive that allowed any seaworthy vessel to continue on to Florida--a directive overridden by the new presidential order. In either case, he said, he was hoping he would be allowed to seek political asylum in the United States.

Rather than reaching either Miami or the tent city at Guantanamo, Destine’s boat was stopped Monday afternoon. Its passengers were hauled aboard the Escanaba, where 18 other Haitians were already waiting, having been picked up from two other boats stopped during the weekend.

Bush’s executive order, issued Sunday, eliminated both Miami and Guantanamo as possibilities, leaving only the option of applying directly to the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince.

The directive was Bush’s answer to a huge increase in Haitians seeking to reach Miami over the last six weeks. The refugee tide had swollen the Guantanamo facility to its capacity of 12,500. All told, more than 34,000 Haitians have been picked up since the exodus began in the weeks after the coup.

In arguing that the Bush order is not a brutal rejection of the hopes of Haitians with legitimate claims to political asylum, U.S. officials said refugees may still apply for a hearing at the American Embassy.

But the scene at the Port-au-Prince dock Tuesday was far from comforting for the returnees, who seemed confused and frightened by the process--so much so, in fact, that only one man asked to be taken to the embassy.

According to U.S. officials, the refugees were “clearly told” of their options when the cutter docked.

However, the explanation was through an American interpreter. Another explanation was given at a processing center by a Haitian Red Cross official. “I didn’t believe it,” said one refugee, reflecting ordinary Haitians’ almost automatic suspicion of any official.

Finally--and only after reporters commented that the refugees did not appear to understand what was happening--the Red Cross made another try as the Haitians were sitting in a Red Cross bus.

Only then did any of the Haitians show any interest. Destine, for example, asked one reporter if he would get into trouble if he went to the embassy. When told there are no guarantees, he said: “I don’t want to ask, then. I don’t want to get into trouble.”

Only one refugee, Emile Millot of Abrigot, said he wanted to try the embassy. He later showed up there along with 13 other Haitians, a number that took the embassy staff by surprise. Their chances of getting a hearing appeared slim, based on the experience of other refugees who have applied directly to the embassy.

The first obstacle is a requirement that any application be made first by letter or telephone, a difficult prospect in a country with few phones and one of the world’s highest illiteracy rates.

To date, only 279 such requests have been made, and of those, 113 were rejected out of hand, leaving only 166 judged as having a right to an appointment.

Of the 166, just 86 have been interviewed by the single U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service agent sent here on temporary duty; the rest are still waiting. Eight others were ruled ineligible by embassy officials without an interview.

Of the 86 interviewed, 70 are waiting for medical clearance or a private sponsor in the United States, meaning that after nearly four months, only 16 Haitian refugees applying for asylum under the only option provided by the Bush order have been sent to the United States.

But even those 16 face an uncertain future, since they still must undergo a hearing before an immigration judge before winning the right to live legally in the United States.

Privately, U.S. officials say this is the way it should be, that nearly all the boat people are economic refugees simply looking for a better life, something American law excludes in considering asylum requests.

When asked why it was, then, that nearly a third of all the boat people reaching Guantanamo were judged by immigration agents to have a legitimate right to a hearing in the United States on their asylum requests, one U.S. official in Haiti said, “The INS people were overly lenient.

“I would say that 0.1% or 0.2% should have been let in,” he added.

In New York, Michael Ratner, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said Tuesday that Bush’s executive order “is a flagrant violation of the refugees’ international rights.” He referred to a United Nations protocol on the status of refugees, which was signed by the United States in 1968 and which prohibits returning a refugee to a country where he or she is likely to face persecution.

Of the more than 34,000 Haitians stopped at sea since October, Ratner said, about 35% have eventually been permitted to come to the United States to pursue asylum claims. Thus, he added, “even by the government’s own standards, they are sending back that 35% who would be found to have fears of persecution. It’s shocking in those terms.”

Ratner said he will file a lawsuit later this week to challenge the policy.

Special correspondent Mike Clary in Miami contributed to this article.