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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Claile Bazile doesn’t know where she and her 2-year-old son will be when they leave the hotel where officials have temporarily reserved rooms for some of the hundreds of people flocking to Haiti after being expelled from the US in the past few days.
The 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck southern Haiti last month, killing more than 2,200 people, also destroyed her family’s home.
“You are on the street,” the 35-year-old told her mother, her five sisters and her brother late on Sunday.
Bazile is one of those who, after being deported to a country they left almost a decade ago, have to struggle for food, housing and work that is largely unknown today: the president was murdered, an earthquake destroyed their relatives and their homes Gang violence has displaced thousands who are now sleeping on the floor in emergency shelters.
Like many Haitians, Bazile said she left after the devastating earthquake in 2010 because she couldn’t find a job and didn’t want to burden her family. Others fled because of the increasing violence. Many traveled to Chile where they found jobs that dried up amid the pandemic, prompting them to travel to Mexico in hopes of settling in the US
They are now returning to a nation that is even more violent, impoverished and politically unstable than when they left.
Gangs control about a third of the capital, Port-au-Prince, where some roundabouts are littered with burned tires and other materials intended to be used as barricades. Overcrowded buses known as tap-taps are puffing dust that is already clogged with columns of black smoke rising from communities where some warehouses and police stations have been ransacked.
Garbage is rarely picked up, so street vendors usually incinerate it themselves around the clock. Dozens of children run around barefoot, some naked, asking for food and water around the entrances to neighborhoods recently razed by gangs. Women often have to travel long distances with heavy buckets on their heads as drinking water is scarce in large parts of Haiti.
Even in the more upscale parts of town, including Petionville, an hour of heavy rain will drive trash and stones onto the streets, forcing people to stay home while rivers of mud flow down broken sidewalks.
Prime Minister Ariel Henry, appointed just weeks after President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated on July 7th at his home, has vowed to help the deportees as other government officials warn Haiti is unwilling to deal with them.
More than 320 migrants were deported to Haiti on Sunday, and two flights arrived early Monday afternoon, with one plane carrying around 130 migrants, according to the Haitian Office for National Migration. More flights with hundreds more migrants are expected this week.
Doctors Without Borders, which recently closed a clinic in one of the most violent areas of the capital, demanded that the US stop deporting migrants on humanitarian grounds.
“The uncertainty we are experiencing today in Port-au-Prince is the worst we have seen in decades,” said the aid organization, noting that more than half of the patients in one of their hospitals suffered life-threatening gunshot wounds. “It is unreasonable to send migrants back against their will into this situation of uncertainty and mortal danger.”
For many deportees, the only guarantee is a hot plate of rice and meat at the airport before venturing onto the streets of Port-au-Prince and beyond to the streets of Port-au-Prince and beyond to partake of it young children seeking protection or expecting help from relatives. Some don’t have both.
Joseph Derilus, 33, had cleaned the beach at a beach hotel near Port-au-Prince before he found a job in the construction industry after the 2010 earthquake, worried about his financial situation and increasing violence in Chile. He lived there for four years before moving to the US-Mexico border.
Now he is back in Haiti with his wife and an almost two-year-old son.
“I have no money. Everything is very complicated, ”he said. “There is no security in Haiti. There is nothing.”
It’s not just the capital. The country of more than 11 million people is struggling with a nationwide surge in gang activity, rising inflation rates and dwindling jobs. About 60% of people earn less than $ 2 a day, and those returning to Haiti will be competing with the tens of thousands of unemployed local people looking for work.
“Our families are looking for life because their home offers them no life,” says Haitian economist Etzer Emile. “We as citizens have a duty to build a home together.”
The prime minister said in a statement late Sunday that he was doing everything possible to ensure political stability and strengthen the country’s economy to improve the living conditions of all Haitians, including those who were deported.
Henry said he had directed local authorities and officials at embassies and consulates to investigate the deportations and assess the situation “in order to propose a quick solution to this nightmare while providing support to those affected”.
“These images make us deeply sad and touch the dignity of all,” he said of widely seen photos and videos of US border agents on horses pushing migrants out of a Texas city.
Some migrants said they plan to leave Haiti as soon as possible to find work elsewhere, but they worry about how they will make money to fund this plan. Others say it will take them some time to settle in Haiti and see if they can find a job before making any decisions.
Rollphson Saintelous, 27, said chronic unemployment led him to leave Haiti in May 2016 after completing his freshman year at university planning to study business administration.
“The country really didn’t offer me anything,” he said.
He went to Chile and found work as a ball boy on the tennis courts of a private university. But it was a job that required late hours and left him with no transportation to return home at night. So he found a job in construction and got up in the field while studying to be a carpenter and an electrician. But even these jobs dwindled in the midst of the pandemic, and he went to Mexico only to find himself in Haiti again and wonder how he should take care of his wife and two-year-old daughter.
“I don’t know how to get a job, but I know I can do anything,” he said. “I am open for everything.”
Emmanuel Guelomme, 27, said he did not know where he, his wife or six-year-old stepson will live in the coming weeks. His family lives in the southern coastal town of Leogane, and he’s not sure how to get there or if he has room as his parents, sister, a nephew and several cousins share a home. He also wonders how and if they can celebrate his stepson’s birthday next week.
“We have just arrived and are not thinking clearly,” says Guelomme, who is studying civil engineering but left Haiti in 2016 because he needed a job to support himself and his family.
“I thought I could go back to Haiti as a tourist to visit my family, have fun and go back to the US,” he said. “Unfortunately that didn’t happen.”
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Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico. AP reporter Alberto Arce in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, contributed to this story.
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