Haitian Interdiction on the High Seas: A U.S. Policy of Bias and Inconsistency 5 St. Thomas Law Review 1992-1993

5 St. Thomas L. Rev. 557 (1992-1993)
Haitian Interdiction on the High Seas: A U.S. Policy of Bias and Inconsistency

handle is hein.journals/stlr5 and id is 567 raw text is: HAITIAN INTERDICTION ON THE HIGH SEAS:
A U.S. POLICY OF BIAS AND INCONSISTENCY
Give Me Your Tire4 Your Poor,
Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free,
The Wretched Refuse of Your Teeming Shore,
Send These, The Homeless, Tempest-tos to Me,
I Lift My Lamp Beside the Golden Door!
Inscription on the Statue of Liberty
I. INTRODUCTION
The luminous splendor of liberty and freedom that the Statue of
Liberty symbolizes for many immigrants is nothing more than a dis-
torted flicker to Haitian Refugees whose boats are apprehended in inter-
national waters by the United States Coast Guard and forcibly routed
back to Haiti where many are welcomed back with open arms, and
loaded guns.' World history has never seen a country go to such ex-
traordinary measures to keep another group of people from entering its
borders.2 Initiated by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, and perfect-
ed by President George Bush in 1992, this policy of forced repatria-
tion has come under heavy political attack in recent years and was a
prominent issue in the 1992 Presidential Election.3 Nonetheless, in the
1. Although the Bush Administration had always maintained that there was no evidence
that Haitians returned to the island by the Coast Guard were persecuted, the United Nations and
other human rights groups have provided evidence to the contrary. The United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees offices in the U.S. and Geneva reported that a group of 73 Hai-
tians, returned on December 1, 1991, were subsequently arrested and interrogated by Haitian
police. The Commissioner also acknowledges that there is no way of monitoring the treatment
of Haitians once they return to Haiti. Barbara Crossette, 73 Haitians Who Returned Home Were
Rapidly Arrested, U.N. Says, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 12, 1991, at A19. In addition, dozens of
Haitians, officially known as double-backers, for having made second desperate attempts to
flee Haiti, told United Nations refugee officials that they suffered beatings, imprisonment, death
threats, and other abuses prompting them to flee their country a second time. Howard W.
French, Some Haitians Say Continuing Abuses Forced a 2d Flight, N.Y. TIMES, Feb. 10, 1992,
at Al.
2. Ira Kurzban, Address at the American Society of International Law and Human Rights
Institute Symposium at St. Thomas University (April 19, 1993) (discussing U.S. policy toward
Haiti).
3. See Bush To Coast Guard: Send Them All Back HAITI INSIGHT (Nat'l Coalition for
Haitian Refugees, New York, N.Y.), May/June 1992, at 1; Marshall Ingwerson, Bush's Tough
Haitian Policy Comes Under Fire, CHRISTIAN Sca. MoNITOR, May 28, 1991, at 1; Wilda White,

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