By US immigration authorities are set to continue deportations to Haiti on Monday, with a flight that is scheduled to have at least 100 people on board, including five individuals who have recently tested positive for the novel coronavirus, according to a US-based rights group.
Among those facing deportation is Stephane Etienne, who first tested positive for COVID-19 on April 17 at the Pine Prairie Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center in Louisiana.
He told Al Jazeera in a video call from the detention centre that he tested positive again on April 28 and has not been re-tested since.
Monday’s deportation flight also includes at least four others who have tested positive since April 16 at the Pine Prairie detention centre, according to the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), a Boston-based human rights organisation that has obtained information about this list.
“I don’t know how they can do this,” said Etienne, who maintains that he has never even set foot in Haiti and was born in the US.
Deporting individuals who are known to be infected with the virus violates US and international public health guidelines designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Dr Jacques Boncy, the director of the Haitian Ministry of Public Health’s national laboratory, said that deporting those who have COVID-19 would also put other passengers on the flight, as well as the crew, and the Haitian population, at risk.
“Everybody knows the risks,” said Dr Laure Adrien, the executive director of the Haitian public health ministry.
“We are facing a pandemic,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that “every positive case is one too many; any positive case is a risk.”
Although Haiti has reported a relatively low number of cases – fewer than 200 – experts fear the actual number is much higher as Haitians who work in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, which has more than 10,000 cases, return home amid lockdown measures.
Haiti’s health system is not equipped to handle an influx of cases, experts warn.
Al Jazeera, Reuters
