The Tribune

By MALCOLM STRACHAN

A FAMILIAR problem has dominated headlines in the past week in The Bahamas – the issue of Haitian migrants being detained as they pass through our waters.

New Labour and Immigration Minister Keith Bell talked of the need for a detention facility in Inagua amid a surge of Haitian migrants being detained. The numbers being detained sounded startling at first. One sloop stopped off at Ragged Island had 137 migrants on board, elsewhere another 292 Haitians were found in Ragged Island the previous week, and then 415 were found on Flamingo Cay.

In total, Mr Bell said more than 1,000 Haitians had been taken into custody in The Bahamas over the past several days.

On Friday, 516 Haitians were repatriated using Bahamasair charter flights.

It is easy to get drawn into the outrage over illegal migration. Many feel it is a challenge to the nation’s sovereignty and that it must be dealt with strongly.

Taking a look at the bigger picture, however, shows it is clearly not an issue of The Bahamas vs Haiti, but a regional problem.

Those 415 migrants found on Flamingo Cay were spotted on the same day that 509 Haitians were flown back to their country from a migrant camp in Texas, part of a group of more than 3,400 Haitians repatriated from the US border with Mexico.

A significant number of the Haitians we are detaining are not looking to reach New Providence or Grand Bahama or Abaco, but rather the United States. We are catching them en route.

Many of the Haitians who have been detained trying to enter the US are coming up through Mexico, where there are an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 Haitian migrants, and there are many other countries dealing with an influx, either settling in those countries or passing through while heading to the US.

Dominican Foreign Minister Roberto Alvarez last week told The Miami Herald: “It’s a regional problem that needs to be tackled.”

He had just held a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to raise concerns over the migration crisis.

In June, Guyana’s Attorney General, Anil Nandlall, said: “They enter Guyana and they do not remain here. Very few leave through the channels they came. These people are being smuggled.”

That’s one part of the problem that doesn’t get highlighted enough – this is a business for those doing the smuggling. Criminals are exploiting those trying to get away from Haiti in order to make money.

More than that, we do not recognise enough that while dealing with migration is a problem for us, it is in truth a symptom of the problems Haiti faces. These people are fleeing Haiti for a reason – and we are treating the symptoms not the problem itself.

Haiti has recently had to deal with an earthquake – and the political turmoil of the nation that has included the assassination of its president.

Doctors Without Borders shut down its hospital in Marissant, which it had operated for 15 years, after a heavily armed gang seized control of the neighbourhood in June.

The main road in Martissant connects the Haitian capital with the south of the country. The gang wanted control. They surrounded the neighbourhood in a well-planned occupation, and were firing on the police station.

Head of the mission there, Seidina Ousseni, last week described the situation on the ground of Port-au-Prince as “urban warfare”.

Ousseni said: “Residents organise themselves to defend their neighbourhoods and when they are not capable of doing it, they have to abandon the place.”

Two weeks after the Martissant attack, gunmen laid siege to an encampment called La Piste, a neighbourhood of deaf and disabled Haitians relocated there by the International Red Cross after the 2010 earthquake. This time it was the police leading an assault, according to residents and a United Nations account.

Joseph Dieu Faite, 56, a blind leader of the displaced residents of La Piste, said the attack was police retaliation against civilians living in a gang-controlled neighbourhood.

“There were some gangsters there, I have to acknowledge that, but the police did not ask, did not say a word, did not make a difference, just evicted us and then took matches and gasoline and burned our houses one by one,” Faite said.

Justin Pierre June, 31, a law student who arrived in Port-au-Prince on a deportee flight from the US, said: “This is not the right moment to deport us to Haiti. Haiti is not ready to receive deportees because its situation is chaotic. This country is in a political, social, security and economic crisis, we are surrounded by gangs from all sides. We should have been allowed to apply to become refugees”

His sentiments were seconded by Philipo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who questioned the US “mass expulsions of individuals...without screening for protection needs.” Grandi said that international law forbids the return of individuals to a country in such dangerous chaos.

Meanwhile, gangs control the streets and the ports. Jean Baptiste Nevelson, 49, a spokesperson for the Bel Air neighbourhood, said: “We do not trust any government, we do not trust the police. We only have ourselves ... to be honest, we arrived at a point where this neighbourhood can only be defended by our weapons.”

He links the violence to poverty and politics. “The state does not provide, we have no water, no schools, no electricity, no jobs. Many people used to go sell in the market and now they have been cut off by our enemies and cannot get there, so they stay here jobless. They are hungry.”

No jobs. No food. No water. No schools. No hope. Is it any wonder so many are turning their backs on the nation and trying to find a future elsewhere?

It doesn’t matter how many patrol boats we send to sea, or how many detention camps we fill. Until Haiti has a solution for its own internal strife, migrants are going to keep taking their chances.

So we can talk tough on immigration and that will appeal to some who don’t see the bigger picture. If we want to solve this, it’s the bigger picture that needs addressed. Let’s hear the talk about dealing with that if anyone wants to be serious about this crisis.