Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
09PORTAUPRINCE346
2009-03-31 16:12:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Port Au Prince
Cable title:  

HAITIAN CRIMINAL DEPORTEES (PART ONE): THE NUTS

Tags:  PREL PGOV PHUM HA ORA INL IOM PRM 
pdf how-to read a cable
P 311612Z MAR 09
FM AMEMBASSY PORT AU PRINCE
TO SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 9791
INFO HAITI COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
AMEMBASSY BRASILIA PRIORITY 
AMEMBASSY PRETORIA PRIORITY 
AMCONSUL QUEBEC PRIORITY 
HQ USSOUTHCOM J2 MIAMI FL PRIORITY
USMISSION USUN NEW YORK PRIORITY
C O N F I D E N T I A L PORT AU PRINCE 000346 


STATE FOR WHA/EX AND WHA/CAR
STATE PASS AID FOR LAC/CAR
S/CRS
SOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD
INR/IAA
WHA/EX PLEASE PASS USOAS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/27/2014
TAGS: PREL PGOV PHUM HA ORA INL IOM PRM
SUBJECT: HAITIAN CRIMINAL DEPORTEES (PART ONE): THE NUTS
AND BOLTS OF POPULATION AND PERCEPTION

REF: PORT AU PRINCE 01710

C O N F I D E N T I A L PORT AU PRINCE 000346


STATE FOR WHA/EX AND WHA/CAR
STATE PASS AID FOR LAC/CAR
S/CRS
SOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD
INR/IAA
WHA/EX PLEASE PASS USOAS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/27/2014
TAGS: PREL PGOV PHUM HA ORA INL IOM PRM
SUBJECT: HAITIAN CRIMINAL DEPORTEES (PART ONE): THE NUTS
AND BOLTS OF POPULATION AND PERCEPTION

REF: PORT AU PRINCE 01710


1. (C) Summary: Embassy inquiries about criminals the U.S.
deports to Haiti reveal that: 1.) Haitian officials and media
periodically blame criminal deportees for increases in crime,
2.) deportees face a degree of social discrimination and
prejudice, and 3.) deportees who resume a life of crime in
Haiti represent the exception rather than the norm. Most
newly-arrived individuals eventually forge new lives in Haiti
with the help of several deportee associations. Although a
local academic says a study he has conducted and will soon
release documents numerous instances of social discrimination
and prejudice, Embassy cannot confirm a pattern of human
rights abuses against deportees. This cable is the first of
three in a series covering criminal deportees in Haiti. End
Summary.

BACKGROUND
--------------


2. (U) Embassy human rights officer contacted Dr. Eric
Calpas, a social analyst and Director at Quisqueya
International Organization for Freedom and Development
(QIFD),a local NGO. His organization conducted interviews
with sixty criminal deportees for a study commissioned by the
Washington Office of Latin America (WOLA),D.C. based
foundation. Although Calpas was unable to provide an advance
copy of the report, he has met with Embassy's human rights
officer on two occasions to informally discuss its contents
and provide further information.


3. (U) Calpas estimates the total deportee (criminal and
non-criminal) population in Haiti at approximately 10,000.
(Note: Immigration and Customs Enforcement 2008 figures show
1,649 deportations to Haiti, 424 of them criminal.End Note.)
He privately estimates that 90 percent of Haitian deportees
do not commit crimes. Deportees, he found, tend to
concentrate in four impoverished greater Port-au-Prince areas
-- Carrefour, Petionville, Cite Soleil, and Martissant -- and
depend primarily on several self-help deportee associations
for advice on re-integration, food, and sometimes shelter
(See Part Three). Calpas states that the majority of

returnees go on to marry, raise children and live productive
lives in Haiti but rarely win social acceptance. Deportees
are usually, he reports, anxious to begin new lives which do
not include crime. In fact, he notes, they frequently bring
valuable business and language skills with them -- often
learned while in U.S. prisons -- and could make significant
contributions to Haiti if they were less stigmatized.

ON CRIME AND GOVERNMENTS
--------------


4. (SBU) News reports and government officials frequently
attribute Haiti's crime and security problems to criminal
behavior of deportees. For example, as the number of
kidnappings rose in 2006, a number of Haitian authorities
publicly blamed criminal deportees. Setting the tone for the
new Preval administration's views on the subject, then
Minister of Foreign Affairs Fritz Longchamps told a Canadian
reporter in 2006, ''It's having a terrible impact on Haiti.
These deportees are responsible for an increase in acts of
violence in this country . . . and in ten years, five to six
thousand of these criminals will be walking our streets.''
In the same year, then Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis
publicly stated that the police were searching for two
criminal deportees in connection with a high profile
kidnapping. Alexis further stated that the Haitian National
Police was ill-equipped to deal with such ''sophisticated''
criminals. GOH allegations cannot be entirely dismissed, but
the extent to which deportees participate in serious crimes
is difficult to determine without additional oversight of
initial enrollment procedures and further monitoring of
deportees after their return to Haiti (See Parts Two and
Three).


5. (U) Calpas disagrees with the officials' assertions.
Mostly, he reports, criminal deportees are ''too afraid of
everyone'' to instigate or plan crimes on their own. While
dismissing the notion that deportees form their own criminal
networks in Haiti, he observes that individuals are
susceptible to recruitment by local criminal gangs,
especially during the initial period of detention and after
release when they have few viable economic or social options.
Some deportees convicted in the U.S. of drug offenses
continue these activities in Haiti (see ref A regarding the
violent death of deportee and convicted drug trafficker,
Monica Pierre). Calpas added in a follow-up interview on
March 3 that criminal networks are sometimes the only Haitian
groups willing to accept or welcome deportees; the Haitian
families who receive deportees, on the other hand, are likely
to exploit the new arrivals (See Part Three).

LEVELS OF CONCERN: STIGMA VS. ABUSE
--------------


6. (SBU) It is widely believed that criminal deportees face
widespread social discrimination; it is not as clear whether
they also face specific human rights abuses not encountered
by other Haitian citizens. Richard Miguel, a Haitian who was
deported in the late 1980s, prefaced his remarks at the 2008
Regional Deportee Conference in Port-au-Prince by noting,
''even after nearly twenty years, people counseled me against
appearing here to speak. . . If they (employers) learn that
you are a deportee, they will fire you.'' He then stated
that of the fifteen deportees he was brought to Haiti with in
the late 1980s, only two were still alive. A forty-nine year
old man (deported from the U.S. in 1990 for ''drugs'') told
Poloff in February that he had pursued a formal legal
complaint against an HNP officer for shooting him six times
in 2002, allegedly at the behest of a neighbor with whom he
had a personal dispute. Calpas revealed privately the case
of a deportee who was observed being taken into a police
station in 2008 for a minor infraction. The police never
registered his entry into the station, and the deportee has
since disappeared.


7. (C) The QIFD study will report that most deportees may in
fact have more to fear from the police than the reverse.
Noting that deportees ''make easy scapegoats,'' Calpas states
that most deportees conceal their status from the authorities
whenever possible; largely due to fear of police abuse and
false criminal accusations by neighbors and their own
families. If a deportee's U.S. family does not send adequate
remittances, their Haitian family may also file false police
reports to force them out of the house (See Part Three).
Deportees confirmed these statements with Poloff on February
16 and March 6 and informally estimated that up to thirty
percent of criminal deportees purchase false identity papers
in the attempt to avoid being subjected to social
discrimination and illegal arrest. False identity papers may
also provide criminal deportees with a means to illegally
migrate to other countries.


8. (U) Calpas also stated and may report that every deportee
returned to Haiti knows of one or two other deportees in
Port-au-Prince who ''just disappeared'' and estimated that a
further two or three deportees die every year due to
unnatural causes; 1) drug-related killings, 2)''clandestine''
deaths such as vigilante stonings or lynchings (often left
underreported and uninvestigated),or 3) deaths by unknown
causes, which locals often attribute to ''supernatural'' or
voodou-motivated vengeance. Without sufficient monitoring or
positive identification, it is impossible to credibly
determine which deportees have died or who has fled the city
for other regions or countries.


9. (C) Comment: The QIFD study should provide fuller evidence
whether the discrimination and occasional violence against
criminal deportees that Calpas related is more anecdotal or
systematic. The QIFD study may help refute suspicions in the
government and the public that deported criminal offenders
are the major contributors to crime in Haiti. Nevertheless,
the Government of Haiti finds it convenient to blame criminal
deportees for a large part of Haiti's crime problem.
Improved accountability and monitoring of deportee arrivals
and integration could help to allay concerns over security
and improve the treatment of these returnees. We need better
data on deportee involvement in crime and their mistreatment
by officials or local communities. End Comment.


SANDERSON