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| Migrants, including Haitians, waited in May to enter the United States at the San Ysidro crossing that links Tijuana, Mexico, with San Diego. Guillermo Arias/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
MEXICO CITY — The Obama administration, responding to an extraordinary wave of Haitian migrants seeking to enter the United States, said on Thursday that it would fully resume deportations of undocumented Haitian immigrants.
After an earthquake devastated parts of Haiti in 2010, the United States suspended deportations, saying that sending Haitians back to the country at a time of great instability would put their lives at risk. About a year later, officials partly resumed deportations, focusing on people convicted of serious crimes or those considered a threat to national security.
But since last spring, thousands of Haitian migrants who had moved to Brazil in search of work have been streaming north, mostly by land, winding up at American border crossings that lead to Southern California.
Few have arrived with American visas, but nearly all have been allowed to enter the United States because immigration officials were prohibited, under the modified deportation policy, from using the so-called fast-track removal process often employed at the border for new, undocumented arrivals.
Instead, the migrants were placed in a slower deportation process and released, with an appointment to appear in immigration court at a later date, officials said. Since early summer, most have been given permission to remain in the country for as long as three years under a humanitarian parole provision, immigrant advocates said.
With the full resumption of deportations, which took effect on Thursday morning, Haitians who arrive at the border without visas will be put into expedited removal proceedings.
Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, said in a statement that conditions in Haiti had “improved sufficiently to permit the U.S. government to remove Haitian nationals on a more regular basis.”
While Mr. Johnson’s statement did not mention the recent influx of Haitians along the southwestern border, Homeland Security officials, during a conference call with reporters, cited the migrant wave as the other major factor in the administration’s decision.
Since last October, officials said, more than 5,000 Haitians without visas have shown up at the San Ysidro crossing that links Tijuana, Mexico, with San Diego. By comparison, 339 Haitians without visas arrived at the San Ysidro crossing in the 2015 fiscal year.
An additional 4,000 to 6,000 Haitians were thought to be making their way from Brazil, immigrant advocates in San Diego and Tijuana said, based on estimates from shelters along the Brazil-to-Mexico migration route.
The message to those Haitians from the Obama administration, however, seems clear: Turn around or go elsewhere.
An uptick in deportations might not occur immediately. Removals require the cooperation of and paperwork from the receiving country, and Homeland Security officials said they were still in talks with the Haitian government about the policy shift.
In the meantime, officials said, nearly all Haitians stopped at the border and scheduled for accelerated deportations will be put into detention centers.
Officials clarified, however, that asylum law would continue to apply to newly arriving Haitians. A migrant who feared returning to Haiti because of the threat of persecution or torture would be interviewed to determine whether that fear was credible. If an immigration officer determined it was, the immigrant could apply for asylum.
Haitian immigrants covered by temporary protected status would be unaffected by the change in policy.
Over the summer, the unusual surge in Haitian migrants was accompanied by an equally unusual surge in migrants from more than two dozen other countries, nearly all traveling along the same arduous routes from South America, across as many as 10 borders.
The migratory wave has overwhelmed shelters along the way, particularly in Tijuana, where the shelters have been at or over capacity for much of the past four months, while also struggling with language and cultural barriers. Some migrants, because they were unable to find accommodations or wanted to avoid shelter living, have chosen to sleep on the streets.
Haitians started migrating to Brazil in large numbers after the earthquake. Haiti was reeling, but Brazil was ascendant, and it had a need for cheap labor, especially with the World Cup and the Olympics approaching. Haitians, with few prospects at home, were happy to oblige.
Thousands of them made their way to Brazil, where many were granted humanitarian visas that allowed them to work.
But amid Brazil’s economic and political convulsions over the last two years, many Haitians lost their jobs or sank deeper into poverty.
The migration north began in earnest during the spring, with a large influx in Tijuana in late May, and the surge has continued.
The Haitian migrant population has mainly consisted of men, though many women have made the trek, too, as have children and even newborns. They have mainly taken an elaborate series of bus rides, though migrants also had to travel at times by foot, truck and boat, and have hired smugglers to help sneak them across certain borders or avoid law enforcement officials.
They have told of highway robberies, frightening encounters with armed gangs and beatings. Some migrants have died during the trip, many being swept away while trying to ford swift-moving rivers.
The shift in American policy caught advocates in San Diego and Tijuana by surprise.
“It was a complete and utter shock,” said Ginger Jacobs, an immigration lawyer and the chairwoman of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium. “We are pretty baffled by what appears to be a complete 180 in terms of policy.”
She added, “We object to a policy change that doesn’t appear to reflect any actual change in reality.”
Margarita Andonaegui, the coordinator of a main migrant shelter in Tijuana, said that on Wednesday afternoon she had received what sounded like heartening news: The American authorities were going to increase their processing capacity for the Haitians, to 150 per day from 50.
But in light of the new deportation policy, that piece of information took on another meaning.
“They’re going to receive them to deport them,” Ms. Andonaegui said. “That’s bad news.”
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A version of this article appears in print on September 23, 2016, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S., Shifting Policy, Will Step Up Deportations of Haitians.
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