St. Pierre parish,
Baradères, Haiti
Sister parish of St. John the Baptist, Silver
Spring, Md.
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Haiti: Giving Hope a Second
Chance U.S. frustration with crime and illegal immigration have changed the rules for non-citizens. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 and anti-terrorism legislation passed that same year now mean that one brush with the law, one strike, may put you out of the country. The INS deported 254 criminals to Haiti in 1997. The figures for the first half of 1998 were roughly 35% higher and other Caribbean and Central American countries are all seeing increases. In U.S. ghettos, where struggling immigrant families live alongside America’s jobless, public institutions are being eroded by funding cuts. Overworked judges and lawyers routinely process cases with plea bargains rather than the clearer, but slower and more costly determination of guilt or innocence afforded by jury trial. Public defenders, unaware of their clients’ immigration status, unwittingly advise them to accept more lenient plea sentencing when doing so leaves any non-citizen, even permanent legal residents, vulnerable to deportation. Many Haitian criminal deportees have plea-bargain convictions. Most often they are for non-violent street level drug offenses. Crime and punishment are big concerns not only in the United States, but throughout Central America and the Caribbean. The emergence of youth gangs beyond U.S. borders and rising rates of violent crime, in countries as culturally distinct as El Salvador and Haiti, are routinely attributed to the burgeoning numbers of U.S. criminal deportees and gang members who arrive in the region each year. Frustrated with corrupt and inefficient judicial systems, citizens are often willing to accept vigilantism in response to crime and juvenile delinquency. Elizè, a broad-shouldered Haitian youth, weaves through sweating crowds dodging the reckless and colorful public transports known as tap taps to lead me into a crumbling building. Dank air provides relief from the tropical heat outside. The winding passage offers a visual tour of poverty and technology from different centuries. I am reminded of Cairo’s subterranean catacombs where Egypt’s contemporary poor live side by side with the dead. But nothing here resembles even shabby Egyptian grandeur. These are private scenes of misery and degradation made public through gaping holes in the walls. |
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At the Haitian National Penitentiary, Touchè Caman does
outreach for Chans Altenativ. looking for deportees among the inmates. “I
never thought I’d be going back into a prison after the last time,”
he tells me laughing. “It’s a lot different on the other side [of the
bars]. “Maybe Chans Altenativ can help a few of them when they get
out.” 
