Courtesy of Marvin J. Thompson
Jacqueline Charles
Wed, February 22, 2023
The Bahamas is vowing to step up repatriations to a crisis-wrecked Haiti, its prime minister declaring in a national address that “The Bahamas is for Bahamians” and the country has to defend its 180,000 square miles of territory.
“We have a comprehensive plan to disrupt the flow of migrants to our islands and to actively pursue the identification and repatriation of those who have entered our nation illegally,” Prime Minister Philip Davis said over the weekend during a speech that outlined a new security and migration policy for the country while laying out its challenges with irregular migration, especially from neighboring Haiti.
Davis’ statement, which was followed by a debate about immigration in the Parliament on Monday, came 48 hours after he and other Caribbean Community leaders ended a meeting in Nassau where leaders of the 15-member regional trade bloc known as CARICOM met privately among themselves, as well as with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry and officials in the Biden administration to discuss what to do about Haiti’s ongoing crisis.
Henry and members of the U.S. delegation had hoped that CARICOM and Canada would take the lead in the deployment of an international force to Haiti, a member state of the bloc. Instead, Canada declared it would continue to provide support to the embattled Haiti National Police and would deploy Naval warships in the waters off Port-au-Prince for deterrence and intelligence gathering for the force.
In October, Davis went on record saying he would provide Bahamian troops and police to a multinational force if asked by the United Nations; last month, Jamaica Prime Minister Andrew Holness, with support from his country’s opposition party, also told his nation’s Parliament that he was open to doing the same.
But instead of sending a force to Haiti or moving ahead with a previously agreed-on decision to visit the country to see for themselves the impact of the spiraling gang violence, leaders agreed to endorse a plan that focuses on strengthening the Haiti National Police, election preparations and inviting Haitian politicians to Jamaica to address the turmoil.
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Though the Caribbean heads of government presented their decision on Haiti as taking their “moral and political obligations” to help a fellow member-state address its multifaceted and complex crisis, Davis characterized it as steps to deal with Haitian migrants during his national address. He called it “the pillars of the CARICOM plan to address the Haitian migration crisis.”
He announced the launch of “Operation Secure,” an aggressive collaborative security campaign between the Royal Bahamas Police Force, the Defense Force and the Department of Immigration to go after undocumented migrants, those who employ them and the illegal structures where they live, also known as shantytowns.
Davis said that the burden of Haitian migration is the reason why last June at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles he declined to sign a pledge that included a commitment to take on refugees, even though 21 other countries in the hemisphere, including fellow Caribbean nations like Barbados and Jamaica, signed on to the agreement.
“Our small nation cannot possibly shoulder any more of a burden. We are standing strong on this position,” Davis said. “Despite pressure, earlier this year, when the United Nations called for countries in our region to halt deportations to Haiti, once again, I decided to continue repatriations.”
At the center of Operation Secure is a crackdown on shantytowns and their landowners.
“Documented migrants living in unregulated communities will be required to relocate at their expense or their employer’s expense or face repatriation,” Davis said of the illegal communities, whose residents include some Bahamians but are overwhelmingly Haitian.
The harder tone on the shantytowns were in stark contrast to Friday’s softer tone. When asked about a court decision clearing the way for the government to deal with the unregulated structures, Davis told journalists that shantytowns are “a challenge and a problem in this country,” and moving quickly to demolish them could create a homeless problem in The Bahamas.
“People are living in these buildings and in the shantytowns, so taking down shantytowns could create the other problem of leaving hundreds or thousands of persons homeless,” he said. “There is no sense responding to a crisis to create another crisis.”
By Sunday, he had changed his mind, declaring in his address that “even wealthy nations like the United States, with all resources at their disposal, struggle to put a complete stop to the inflow of undocumented migrants across their borders. But the difficulty of the task will not deter us from doing all that we can to intercept undocumented vessels in our waters.”
Last year, The Bahamas repatriated a record 4,748 people. Already this year, they have returned 1,024 individuals, Immigration Director Keith Bell told Parliament on Monday.
“If present irregular migration trends continue... we will experience another record-breaking year,” Bell said, adding that “our aggressive efforts to protect our borders and deport those who enter our country illegally has not ceased in 2023.”
During the debate in Parliament, Bell endorsed Davis’ position but also tried to show that the crackdown wasn’t just aimed at Haitian nationals. The Bahamas, he said, currently has 180 Cubans and 97 Haitians in its main immigration detention centers, along with 33 other people of various nationalities.
“We have repatriated to Cuba, Haiti, Guyana, Dominica, America, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Brazil,” Bell said.
Still, Haitians account for the leading number of migrants, and the leading cause of the government’s angst. Its hardline tone echoed that of the neighboring Turks and Caicos, whose immigration minister, Arlington Musgrove, a week earlier announced a similar crackdown on undocumented Haitian migrants in its territory.
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