Chaos on tarmac at Haiti's main airport after U.S. deports migrants

Edited by Ed Newman
2021-09-22 16:37:31

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Haitians deported from the US try to board the same plane in which they were deported, at Port-au-Prince airport on Tuesday.

Port-au-Prince, September 22 (RHC)-- Furious Haitians crowded the tarmac at Port-au-Prince airport after being dropped off by a deportation flight they say they were given little prior notice of, a journalist at the scene told reporters.

A group of men rushed back toward a plane after they disembarked, with one man attempting to get back on board, witnesses told Reuters.  "I am angry at the government.  We were told in prison that the Haitian government had signed to send us back to Haiti.  They are all bad people, these authorities," said Yranese Melidor, 45, who arrived on an earlier flight, Reuters reported.

"We didn't see any U.S. presence except for the aircraft.  From what I observed, it basically looked like they were flown there and left," journalist Erlen Ofte Arntsen told CNN of the people he spoke with at the airport in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday.

The migrants were angry at what they described as prison-like conditions in the US holding centers they were detained in before they were flown back, Arnsten said.  "They had to stay there for days in very close quarters, one meal a day, not being able to shower. And they also did not realize they were being sent back to Haiti before yesterday. They thought they might be going into another [place of] confinement," Arntsen added.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security acknowledge the "disruptions on the tarmac" in Port-au-Prince saying Haitian crowd control officers resolved the situation.



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