American Notes Refugees

Dancing and waving signs, hundreds of Haitian immigrants took to the streets of Miami to celebrate a victory for their countrymen last week. Rejecting the government's argument that it should be allowed to ship back to Haiti the refugees who have tried to reach Florida in sailboats in the past three months, U.S. District Judge C. Clyde Atkins extended his ban on forcible repatriation of the boat people. Since September, when the military ousted Haiti's first democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted 6,442 Haitians. Most are now living in camps at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Atkins ruled that the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service had used inadequate methods to distinguish Haitians who are genuine political refugees from economic migrants who are not eligible for asylum. Attorneys for the Haitians found that INS officers had insufficient knowledge of the grounds for asylum and knew virtually nothing about political conditions in Haiti. The government has been given a week to draw up new procedures. Meanwhile, the seaborne exodus from Haiti shows no signs of slowing down.