By Woodger Faugus, Gen, September 28, 2021
Since mid-September 2021, roughly 15,000 would-be refugees and asylees, mostly Haitians, had reached American soil, in Del Rio, Texas, after having risked their lives, and abandoned their livelihoods, to flee violence and discrimination. To date, almost 4,000 Haitians, some of them children with “non-Haitian passports,” have coped with forcible returns to Haiti, and about 8,000 went back to Mexico “voluntarily.” Many of the remaining people are slated to face deportation carried out under the Title 42, § 265, emergency public health law.
In recent days, multiple scholars, activists, and public servants have intensely criticized the Joe Biden administration for its treatment of Haitian immigrants. Notably, Ambassador Daniel L. Foote, Special Envoy for Haiti, resigned on account of not wanting to “not be associated with the United States[’] inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees,” given “the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life” in Haiti. Foote’s resignation echoes the sentiments felt by many — who have argued, in essence, that Biden is toeing the realpolitik (or tough, amoral, and cynical), line embraced by his Republican and Democratic predecessors. Other allegations, expressed by U.S. Congresswomen Maxine Waters and Ayanna Pressley as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, have compared border agents’ “corralling” of Haitian immigrants to slave hunting.
While such comparisons may be apt, the recent treatment of Haitian immigrants needs to be understood in the light of the specific horrors inflicted by science, in pre-independence Haiti, on non-consenting Afro-Haitian experimental subjects. Such understanding is crucial in shaping the delivery of healthcare services to Haitian refugees who remain in the U.S. Awareness of, and sensitivity to, this history, especially from the perspective of healthcare practitioners, will only increase the effectiveness of any future patient care delivery.
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