ARTICLE - DEPORTEE DIES IN HAITI

ACTIVISTS SEEK TO STOP US FROM DEPORTING HAITIANS AFTER DEPORTEE DIES AFTER BEING SENT BACK
(CP) - By Jennifer Kay

MIAMI — A Haitian man who suffered cholera-like symptoms and died in his Caribbean homeland after the U.S. government sent him back had participated in a hunger strike while detained in the U.S. and wrote to immigration attorneys that returning to Haiti amounted to a death sentence, his fiancee said Wednesday.

Wildrick Guerrier was deported to Haiti with 26 others on Jan. 20. It was the first group deported to Haiti since a catastrophic earthquake struck that country in January 2010. All but one had been convicted of a crime in the United States.

He was among 26 Haitian detainees at a Louisiana detention centre who had participated in a six-day hunger strike that ended Jan. 18, his fiancee Claudine Magloire said.

In a Jan. 13 letter to U.S. immigration authorities, Guerrier and the hunger-strikers asked that if they must be deported to send them to another country — Canada, France, Britain, China, Venezuela, Germany or Cuba — because post-earthquake conditions, a cholera outbreak and political unrest make Haiti an inhumane destination.

"Being removed to Haiti would amount to a death sentence," they wrote from the South Louisiana Correctional Center in Basile, Louisiana. "Other immigrants whose countries are in dire conditions such as Haiti do not have to go through this. What have we done as a Haitian people to be sentenced to death?"

They only drank water for six days to call attention to their demands that they be released to their families in the U.S. or be deported to a third country.

Guerrier, 34, has been the only one of the hunger-strikers to be deported, according to immigration attorneys from the University of Miami School of Law and the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center.

He was detained along with 17 other men in a Haitian police station jail cell after he arrived. An aunt flew from the U.S. so she could bring him food and water in the jail every day, because he had no close relatives in Haiti, said Magloire, 33, a permanent U.S. resident who lives in Fort Lauderdale.

Guerrier was released to his aunt's care Thursday after suffering from vomiting and severe diarrhea. He died Saturday at a cousin's home.

Magloire blamed the U.S. government for Guerrier's death. He complained of stomach pains shortly after arriving in Haiti, she said. If Guerrier was ill after the hunger strike, he should not have been put on a plane to Haiti, she said.

"If it were not for the U.S. government ... They are the cause for my fiance's death, and they are sending these deportees to a death sentence," she said, tears streaming down her face.

Haiti's consul general in Miami said Guerrier's death was under investigation but there was no information immediately available.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has said it expects to deport this year about 700 Haitians convicted of serious crimes such as homicide, kidnapping, sexual assault, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, embezzlement, money laundering and extortion.

Immigration attorneys challenged that Wednesday, noting that Guerrier had served less than two years in a U.S. jail for a conviction on a charge of possessing a firearm by a convicted felon while he was working as an armed security guard. That charge stemmed from a previous conviction for battery on a law enforcement officer, for which he had served probation.

Guerrier's case indicates that many of the other Haitian detainees and deportees could be released in the U.S. without posing a threat to public safety, said Cheryl Little, executive director of FIAC.

An ICE spokeswoman said she was looking into their questions.

Several legal and immigrant rights groups have asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to intervene and stop the deportations. Attorneys have warned that deported Haitians might face serious illness or death if they are sent to such unsanitary jails.

"The United States knew what would happen if it sent people to Haiti, and it had a choice. It did not have to send people to Haiti, not now," said Rebecca Sharpless, director of the University of Miami School of Law's immigration clinic, which is among the groups petitioning the IACHR.

The other hunger-striker's were terrified that they would suffer Guerrier's fate, and many have filed motions to reopen their immigration cases, the attorneys said. One detainee's wife wept as she called for a moratorium on deportations to Haiti.

"My husband doesn't deserve that," said Mere Meregene Longchamps. "Please give us a chance."