What's Up Little Haiti

 Haiti leader pleads guilty to money laundering in drug case

Monday, April 24, 2017

MIAMI, Florida (AP) — A former Haitian coup leader and recently elected senator in that country pleaded guilty Monday to a US drug money-laundering charge under a deal that should allow him to avoid a potential sentence of life in prison for cocaine trafficking.
Under the plea deal, the recommended prison sentence for Guy Philippe is nine years and the drug trafficking charge would be dropped. He also faces a US$1.5 million fine at a sentencing hearing July 5.
"You understand I am under no obligation to impose that sentence?" asked US District Judge Cecilia M Altonaga, noting that the maximum potential sentence is 20 years.
"Yes, your honour," said Philippe.
Philippe, 49, led a 2004 Haitian uprising that ousted then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and was indicted along with several others on US drug charges in 2005. He managed to elude capture for more than a decade, including at least 10 attempts to arrest him in Haiti that involved a military operation and a foot chase through the countryside.
Philippe was elected to the Haitian Senate in November but was arrested while giving a live radio interview in the capital of Port-au-Prince in January and whisked immediately to the US Altonaga rejected his claim of immunity as an elected Haitian official. The judge noted even if immunity applied, Philippe had not yet been officially sworn in.
There was no immediate comment about the guilty plea from the many members of Haiti's parliament who questioned the legality of swiftly flying Philippe to Florida on the same day of his arrest in the capital's Petionville district.
The remote, mountainous town of southwest Haiti where Philippe ran a virtual fiefdom was also quiet on Monday, local residents said. The town of Pestel was one of many communities on Haiti's remote southern peninsula struggling with flooding following heavy rain.
Philippe admitted Monday in court that, as a high-ranking Haitian police commander in the city of Cap-Haitien, he accepted between US$1.5 million and US$3.5 million from drug smugglers from 1999 to 2003. Prosecutors say Philippe and other police officers took the money in exchange for ensuring safe passage for cocaine shipments from Colombia and other countries that went through Haiti on their way to Miami and other US destinations.
"Philippe cast aside his duty to protect and serve the people of Haiti," said Acting US Attorney Benjamin Greenberg. "Instead, he abused his position of authority as a high-ranking Haitian National Police officer to safeguard drug shipments and launder illicit trafficking proceeds."
Philippe attorney Zeljka Bozanic said taking the potential life sentence off the table was the key to the plea agreement, especially considering there are few witnesses and documents available to mount a credible defence.
"We're happy that's going to be the result," she said. "Hopefully he'll still be a relatively young person walking out of there."
About US$376,000 of the illicit cash was wired to a Miami bank account from Haiti and Ecuador and used by Philippe to purchase a house in the Fort Lauderdale area, according to court documents.
There was a series of protests in Haiti when Philippe was arrested in January, with some supporters calling it an illegal kidnapping. Several dozen people demonstrated outside the Miami courthouse at one of his earlier appearances, but there was no such show of support Monday.
"It is important that Philippe accepted responsibility for his criminal offenses against the United States and the people of Haiti," said Adolphus Wright, chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Miami office.

Haiti PM's motorcade hits 2, killing 1 near flooded zone

Monday, April 24, 2017

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A motorcade carrying Haiti's prime minister struck two teenage boys, killing one, as officials drove into the country's third largest city on Monday to see flood damage left by heavy rains.
Serge Daniel, a government delegate who was traveling in Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant's motorcade, said one of the vehicles accidentally struck two adolescents who darted into the road on a motorbike.
The motorcade continued on to its destination as the badly injured teenagers lay on the road, sparking a tire-burning protest by furious locals in the southwest city of Les Cayes.
Les Cayes police spokeswoman Guerline Dimanche said officers rushed the boys to a public hospital, where one was declared dead on arrival.
Mayor Jean Gabriel Fortune said Lafontant, a physician who was approved last month as Haiti's No 2 official, agreed to put the survivor on a government helicopter for treatment in the capital of Port-au-Prince.
It was not clear if the motorcade was speeding or if the boys were driving recklessly.
Monday's trip was meant to show government solidarity with victims of downpours that have saturated much of Haiti, triggering flooding in low-lying areas and causing at least two deaths in the struggling southwest region that was slammed by Hurricane Matthew last year.
Interior Ministry spokesman Guillaume Albert Moleon said that a 19-year-old man in Camp Perrin was swept away when he tried to cross a rising river with his motorbike. The other death was an elderly resident of Port Salut whose shack was destroyed by a torrent of water.
Even moderate rain in Haiti can lead to flash floods carrying mud and debris and authorities have urged people near surging rivers to be vigilant.
A trough bringing wet weather has drenched swaths of the Caribbean in recent days, with some flooding reported in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Puerto Rico.

Haitian TPS

The Trump administration should extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for all qualified Haitians. Failing to do so will complicate the delicate and fragile situation in Haiti.

However, we need to think beyond the Band-Aid of TPS and seek long-term solutions to Haiti’s continuing crisis. Haitians are found in just about every country in our hemisphere as unwanted migrants.

The United States is uniquely placed to innovate by working with Haiti’s Moise/Lafontant administration, the large, and largely successful, U.S.-based Haitian diaspora, and the Haitian private sector, to channel some USAID funds into an investment fund with strict oversight and management structure to facilitate direct investments in key sectors in Haiti.

Keeping displaced Haitians here is the right thing to do, but it does not address the continuing factors that have made the average Haitian youth dream only of a visa or an illegal trip to seek a better life elsewhere.

JEAN D. VERNET, II,

BROOKLYN, NY

APRIL 27, 2017

“You Live Under Fear”: 50,000 Haitian People at Risk of Deportation

by DARLENE DUBUISSON – MARK SCHULLER

 “With TPS, it’s like you live under fear,” thirty something aspiring nurse Michaëlle explained. “You don’t know what’s going to happen. I live with stress because of that.”

Michaëlle’s situation just got worse on April 20, when Trump’s immigration agency recommended ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 50,000 Haitian people living in the U.S.

After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, President Obama granted temporary relief status to undocumented Haitians who had arrived in the U.S. before 2011. Given the slow pace of recovery efforts and subsequent disasters – notably the cholera epidemic that has killed over 10,000 and counting, and Hurricane Matthew that hit Haiti last October – TPS has been extended several times. The latest TPS is set to expire on July 22, 2017.

In essence, the Trump administration’s policy would amount to kicking out 50,000 people who have, despite their fear, put their faith in the U.S. government to legalize, like fifty something child care provider Wideline. She recalls that “[We were told to] tell all fellow Haitians they don’t need to fear because they are going to give Haitians who are illegal in this country papers so they can work.”

Wideline specifically acknowledged fear that TPS would become, in effect, a pipeline to deportation: “people spread fear, arguing that the papers were so that the U.S. government can identify Haitians living in the country in order to deport them. And this is why some people didn’t do it.”

Given the switch in administration, TPS, like registering for DACA for many undocumented Mexican families, has meant that it places a target on people’s heads. TPS, like DACA, makes people visible to the State and thus more “deportable,” like undocumented rights activist Jeanette Vizguerra, who sought sanctuary in a Denver church this February.

While this particular threat to the Haitian American community has gone largely unreported, it represents a betrayal for some. Unlike Mexican Americans, specifically targeted by then-candidate Trump, Haitian Americans, particularly in Florida, were actively courted by Republican strategists and Breitbart News.

In 2000, the fate of the free world hung on 537 dimpled chads in the Sunshine State, home to an estimated 424,000 people of Haitian descent per the 2010 Census. This number is low not only because of undocumented but because people have to self-select as “Haitian.”

Many Haitian community leaders and organizations were solid and early backers of Obama, the country’s first African American president. Compared to the Cuban community in South Florida, the Haitian Diaspora wields less political power because of the lack of dual citizenship. As the first and only slave revolt to beget a free nation, Haiti has long symbolized Black pride. As scholars such as Nina Glick Schiller and Georges Fouron and others argue, Haitian Diaspora keep their Haitian citizenship while sending remittances, representing athird of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.

Following the earthquake, organizations within the Haitian Diaspora such as the Haitian Congress to Fortify Haiti pushed for both TPS in the U.S. and dual citizenship in Haiti. Both were won in 2011.

Why would this solid Democratic voting bloc help push the needle towards a candidate who openly expressed hostility toward immigrants?

While the Haitian community is large and diverse, and therefore complex, an important factor was the role the Clintons – the “king and queen of Haiti” – played following the earthquake.

On April 11, the United Nations announced the end of its controversial military force. MINUSTAH belatedly apologized for infecting Haiti with cholera, but it was too little, too late. And the UN is still attempting to dodge responsibility for a rash of sexual assault cases. The Clintons were involved in no-bid contracts for shoddy homes,high-end tourism, an apparel factory outside of Port-au-Prince, andgold prospecting.

Some in the Haitian community might have forgiven this disaster capitalism if Haiti was “built back better” as Bill Clinton promised.

It wasn’t.

However, at least in the capital of Port-au-Prince, an argument can be made for at least some economic institutions and physical infrastructure being rebuilt. Much of this is unrecognized initiative by Haitian people themselves, such as in Canaan, an informal settlement created to house the displaced after the earthquake.

Following Trump’s election, proponents for ending TPS suggest that Haiti has recovered enough to support the return of these undocumented.

It seems that yet again when officials speak of Haiti, they mean Port-au-Prince, where recovery efforts have been targeted. But Port-au-Prince is not Haiti. And Haitian TPS holders have origins all over the country, including the Grand’Anse that is still reeling from Hurricane Matthew. But people living outside of the capital are moun andeyò,“outsiders.” As the lackluster international response suggested, these people who live far from the NGO offices and high-end hotels don’t count. Their lives don’t matter.

Like many community leaders here legally, people like Michaëlle who don’t have legal status define both as “home.” Professors Shannon Gleeson and Kate Griffith at Cornell University lead a study of TPS holders in NYC. This research documents that Haitian TPS holders tend to have significant ties to this country, not the least having had children and raising them here.

Of the 30 respondents in the Cornell study so far, most report being in the U.S. for decades, particularly beginning in the late 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. Being Haitian in the 1980s was to endure ridicule and stigma, as Haiti was incorrectly blamed for AIDS. U.S. actions like the destruction of local pigs, rural bank accounts, as well as free-trade policies it imposed destroyed Haiti’s economy, triggering this migration in the first place. These actions benefited large U.S. agribusiness and other corporations.

The people in the Cornell study tend to have children here, and some report having left children back in Haiti. Many people report having worked in the undocumented labor force, but after receiving TPS they could apply for better paying jobs, albeit still below minimum wage. But these jobs require that their TPS be current, which costs $400 every eighteen months.

Ending TPS would cause a deep wound in the Haitian community, ripping apart families, and punishing people who endure sub-minimum wage jobs because they believed the government would be fair.

Especially because of the causes of the migration – not to mention exploitative working conditions –benefit U.S. companies in the first place, justice demands that the U.S. own its accountability to these temporary status holders.

But TPS also affirms humanity and human decency. Michaëlle reported “I feel grateful because I am in this country. I have the ability to go to school and to work.”

Michaëlle, like other TPS holders from Haiti, Honduras, and El Salvador, contribute to this country through their labor and the pursuit of their dreams.

The least we can do is act, before the final ruling on TPS is handed down. There is a petition calling for Secretary Kelly to renew TPS.

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