By Julie Watson, Gisela Pérez, Katie Licari, Trenton Daniel and Patricia Luna -
The Associated Press
SANTIAGO DE CHILE (AP) — With jokes, upbeat Caribbean music and scenes of vacations on sunny palm-fringed beaches, Haitian
influencers
on YouTube and TikTok advertise charter trips to South America.
But what they promote is not aimed at tourists.
They are part of a little-known booming business that exploits the US government's decision to send asylum seekers back to Haiti, a country plagued by gang violence.
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More than a dozen South American travel agencies have chartered planes from low-cost Latin American airlines — including 238-seat Airbuses — and sold tickets at high prices.
Many of the clients are Haitians who lived in Chile and Brazil before managing to cross the border between Mexico and the United States and arrive in Texas, from where they were expelled by the Joe Biden government, which also denied them the right to seek asylum in the future.
They use charter flights to leave Haiti and return to South America.
Some assure that they will try again to enter the United States.
Haitians line up to board a flight to Chile at Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince on January 30, 2022. Odelyn Joseph / AP
Rodolfo Noriega, national coordinator for Immigrants in Chile, said that unscrupulous businessmen exploit the desperation of Haitians and take advantage of them.
“They are at the end of a chain of powerful businesses that profit from this circuit of Haitian migration,” he said.
The airlines and travel agencies
say that they operate within the legal framework of the countries where they operate
and that they simply offer a service to the Haitian diaspora in South America.
This lucrative business came to light during an eight-month investigation by The Associated Press and the UC Berkeley-based Journalistic Investigations Program at the Center for Human Rights.
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Haitians fed up with the hardships they endure on their land left for Chile and Brazil, many after the catastrophic 2010 earthquake wreaked havoc in Haiti.
Last year, when the coronavirus pandemic hit local economies and racism spread, thousands decided to go to Del Río, a Texas city near the border with Mexico.
There they stumbled upon a public health ordinance invoked by the Donald Trump administration and continued to be used under the Biden administration, which prevents migrants from seeking asylum.
The US authorities sent them back not to South America, where many of their children had been born, but to Haiti.
Some interviewed by The Associated Press said they
feared for their lives in Haiti and wanted to return to South America
.
But airlines suspended direct commercial flights to Chile and Brazil during the pandemic.
The only option was charter flights, which became a lucrative business at a time when restrictions imposed to combat the spread of the coronavirus curbed tourism, according to travel agents.
Planes arrived in Haiti empty and left full.
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Between November 2020 and May of this year, there were at least 128 charter flights contracted by Chilean and Brazilian agencies to transport people from Haiti, according to flight logs, online postings and other independent verification by the AP and Berkeley. .
Since taking office in January 2021, the Biden administration has sent more than 25,000 Haitians back to their country, despite the fact that human rights groups say that the expulsions will only add to Haiti's problems and encourage the migration of Haitians. Haitians to Latin America and the United States.
Not all of the charter passengers are people who tried to immigrate to the United States, but interviews with dozens of travel agents, Haitian migrants and activists, and an analysis of flight data using the Swedish service Flightradar24, indicate that
those flights they are an important resource for those who want to escape Haiti.
Some who took charter flights to South America tried to return to the United States, using clandestine networks that take them across Central America and Mexico, according to immigration lawyers, activists and interviews with dozens of Haitians.
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Many Haitians return to Chile and Brazil instead of staying in places closer to the United States, such as Mexico, because they have visas and other legal documents in those nations.
And, after having lived there, they have an easier time finding work and raising money to try again to get to the United States.
Some, like Armstrong Jean-Baptiste, have children born in South America.
The 33-year-old father of two said
he spent $6,000 on a long trip from Chile to Texas, only to be sent back to Haiti.
He stated that he was threatened with daggers, crossed rivers where others died, and encountered robbers on the highways.
In the United States, immigration authorities treated Haitians "like animals."
He indicated that his son contracted pneumonia in the migrant detention center.
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While waiting for a charter flight in Port-au-Prince to return to Santiago, news came from Chile showing why Haitians want to go to the United States: An anti-immigrant demonstration drew thousands of people who destroyed a migrant camp.
Will you try to enter the United States again?
She didn't rule it out.
"There are so many risks that it is not something that you want to repeat," he said.
"At the same time, never say never."