Carceral quarantine at Guantánamo: Legacies of US imprisonment of haitian refugees, 1991 - 1994

Radical History Review

Volumn , Issue 115, 2013, Pages 142-168

  Naomi Paik, A ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84871597694     PISSN: 01636545     EISSN: 15341453     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/01636545-1724751     Document Type: Article

References (92)

1. Haitian Centers Council v. Sale, 92 Cv 1258 (Sj) 823 F. Supp. 1028 (1993).
2. Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 66.
3. Jana K. Lipman, Guantánamo: A Working-Class History between Empire and Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 4.
4. Jana Evans Braziel, "Haiti, Guantánamo, and the 'One Indispensable Nation': US Imperialism, 'Apparent States,' and the Postcolonial Problematics of Sovereignty, " Cultural Critique, no. 64 (2006): 127-160.
5. This article is grounded in the legal archives of Haitian Centers Council v. Sale, which includes the testimonies of key refugee witnesses, some of which are cited below. The testimonies include affidavits, depositions, trial testimonies, town meeting minutes, and letters to family and the media. A deeper examination of these testimonies is included in the larger project with which this article dialogues, a book manuscript on US camps and their rightless prisoners.
6. Charles Arthur and Michael Dash, "Foreign Interventions, " in A Haiti Anthology: Libète, eds. Charles Arthur and Michael Dash (London: Latin America Bureau, 1999), 209.
7. Braziel, "Haiti, Guantánamo, and the 'One Indispensable Nation,' " Cultural Critique, no. 64 (2006): 131-32.
8. Mary Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of US Imperialism, 1915-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 36.
9. Lease of Lands for Coaling and Naval Stations, February 23, 1903, Art. 3, TS 418.
10. Treaty between the United States and Cuba Defining Their Relations, May 29, 1934, Art. 3, TS 866.
11. Braziel, "Haiti, Guantánamo, and the 'One Indispensable Nation,' " 135.
12. See also Barbara Briggs and Charles Kernaghan, "The US Economic Agenda: A Sweatshop Model of Development, " in Haiti: Dangerous Crossroads, ed. The North American Congress on Latin America (Boston: South End Press, 1995).
13. Quoted in Paul Farmer, AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 188.
14. Michael S. Hooper cites the World Bank report, "Haiti: Policy Proposals for Growth. "
15. Norman L. Zucker and Naomi Flink Zucker, Desperate Crossings: Seeking Refuge in America (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996), 35-36.
16. Gilburt Loescher and John Scalan, "Human Rights, US Foreign Policy, and Haitian Refugees, " Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 26, no. 3 (August 1984): 322.
17. Gil Loescher and John A. Scalan, Calculated Kindness: Refugees and America's Half-Open Door, 1945 to the Present (New York: Free Press, 1986), 80.
18. Lawless, Haiti's Bad Press, 160.
19. Loescher and Scalan, "Human Rights, US Foreign Policy, and Haitian Refugees, " 348.
20. Quoted in Dupuy, "Globalization, the World Bank, and the Haitian Economy, " 51. The United States propped Jean-Claude's regime until political opposition made it incapable of "administer[ing] economic reforms" and therefore "[in]compatible with US plans. " Arthur and Dash, "Foreign Interventions, " 213.
21. Loescher and Scalan, "Human Rights, US Foreign Policy, and Haitian Refugees, " 325.
22. Peter Nyers, Rethinking Refugees: Beyond States of Emergency (New York: Routledge, 2006).
23. Naomi Flink Zucker, "The Haitians versus the United States: The Courts as Last Resort, " Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 467 (1983): 151-62.
24. See also Loescher and Scalan, Calculated Kindness, especially chap. 9.
25. Haitian Refugee Center v. Civiletti.
26. Haitian Refugee Center v. Civiletti.
27. Haitian Refugee Center v. Civiletti.
28. Loescher and Scalan, "Human Rights, US Foreign Policy, and Haitian Refugees, " 341.
29. Loescher and Scalan, Calculated Kindness, 180-82.
30. See Frederick J. Conway and Susan Buchanan Stafford, "Haitians, " in Refugees in America in the 1990s: A Reference Handbook, ed. David W. Haines (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 180.
31. See Nina Glick-Schiller and Georges Fouron, " 'Everywhere We Go, We Are in Danger': Ti Manno and the Emergence of a Haitian Transnational Identity, " American Ethnologist (May 1990): 336-37.
32. Zucker, "The Haitians versus the United States, " 158.
33. Ronald Reagan, "Executive Order 12,324-Interdiction of Illegal Aliens, " September 29, 1981, available at The American Presidency Project, eds. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=44317#axzz1ZB5dfKHU.
34. Mae Ngai explores a related expansion of the US border with Mexico, examining the role of the border patrol in its efforts to regulate "illegal immigration" in the mid-twentieth century. See chapter 4 of Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
35. Quoted in Loescher and Scalan, Calculated Kindness, 194 and 196.
36. See Farmer, The Uses of Haiti, 163.
37. Haitian Refugee Center, Inc. v. Baker, 789 F. Supp. 1552 (S.D. Fla. 1991).
38. The court decided that the Fifth Amendment does, in fact, apply at Guantánamo. Haitian Centers Council, Inc. v. McNary, 969 F.2d 1326 (1992).
39. Zucker and Zucker, Desperate Crossings, 110.
40. Harold Hongju Koh, "The Human Face of the Haitian Interdiction Program, " Virginia Journal of International Law 33 (1993): 488.
41. Harold Hongju Koh, "The 'Haiti Paradigm' in United States Human Rights Policy, " Yale Law Journal 2391 (1993-94): 2402.
42. Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, 969 F.2d 1350, Reversed (1993).
43. The initial venue where this case was argued, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, cited Scalia in ruling in favor of the refugees. Haitian Centers Council v. McNary, 969 F.2d 1350 (1992).
44. Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 6. Ngai argues that the US state has produced the "illegal alien, " "a social reality and legal impossibility, " through immigration restriction, which marks an assertion of national sovereignty. Revealing the nonrecognition of Haitian refugees, the court labels them as "migrants, " "undocumented aliens, " "emigrants, " "passengers, " or at most, "fleeing Haitians. "
45. Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, 969 F.2d 1350, Reversed (1993).
46. Lillian Guerra, "Elián González and the 'Real Cuba' of Miami: Visions of Identity, Exceptionality, and Divinity, " Cuban Studies 38 (2007): 13-14.
47. See Noam Chomsky, introduction to Farmer, The Uses of Haiti, 36.
48. Dupuy, "Globalization, the World Bank, and the Haitian Economy, " 57, 65.
49. Quoted in Zucker and Zucker, Desperate Crossings, 119.
50. Alan Kraut traces the history of regulating immigrant bodies and health from the late nineteenth century. As he argues, many US citizens feared that the millions of immigrants arriving from non-northern European countries might bring with them "silent travelers, germs that could spread infectious disease among Americans and genes that could undermine the country's rugged, Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic, pioneering breed with inferior genetic trait. " Alan M. Kraut, "Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and American Efficiency, " Social Science History 12, no. 4 (1999): 378.
51. Farmer, AIDS and Accusation, 211.
52. Lawless, Haiti's Bad Press, 14, 17.
53. Farmer, AIDS and Accusation, 246, 142.
54. Mari N. Jenson, "HIV's Path out of Africa: Haiti, the US, Then the World, " EurekAlert!, October 25, 2007, www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-10/uoa-hpo102507. php.
55. Lawless, Haiti's Bad Press, 15.
56. Quoted in Farmer, AIDS and Accusation, 147.
57. Farmer, AIDS and Accusation, 2, 218.
58. Quoted in Farmer, AIDS and Accusation, 237.
59. Amy Kaplan, "Where is Guantánamo?, " American Quarterly 57, no. 3 (2005), 839.
60. Farmer, The Uses of Haiti, 66.
61. Both the FDA and the CDC did remove their respective HIV/AIDS risk designations from Haitians as a social category, but this revision was not widely publicized.
62. Farmer, AIDS and Accusation, 210, 221.
63. Congress's decision to renew the law in 1993 reflected the overwhelming support of its constituents. Farmer, Pathologies of Power, 59, 67.
64. Bulkeley Meeting Minutes, August 11, 1992.
65. Renda, Taking Haiti, 15.
66. As Vice President Frantz Guerrier described: "ARPH was created because of the abuse and mistreatment.... I and the other founders felt bad for some of our brothers who were very uncomfortable in communicating with the authorities, and so we... continued to work for the whole community. " Through the ARPH the refugees also coordinated actions against their detention, including letters to the press, peaceful marches, and a hunger strike. Although the ARPH is not formally recognized as a plaintiff in the HCC III case, the HCC legal team communicated with the refugees through their organizational structure, in addition to working with individual refugees. Deposition of Vilsaint Michel, February 22, 1993, Haitian Centers Council v. Sale.
67. Deposition of Vilsaint Michel, Haitian Centers Council v. Sale.
68. Statement by Douglas Shenson regarding the condition of HIV-infected Haitian refugees at Guantánamo, February 9, 1993, Haitian Centers Council v. Sale, 1.
69. Deposition of Fritznel Camy, February 26, 1993, Haitian Centers Council v. Sale, 157.
70. Bulkeley Meeting Minutes, August 11, 1992, Haitian Centers Council v. Sale.
71. An electrician who worked for Aristide's campaign, Verdieu was extorted for money by military officers who falsely accused him of setting fires in protest of the coup. Realizing they would kill him when he could no longer offer payments, he fled Haiti with his fifteen-year-old sister, who, testing negative for HIV, was granted asylum and left Guantánamo. Deposition of Elma Verdieu, February 21, 1993, Haitian Centers Council v. Sale.
72. Deposition of Yolande Jean, February 21, 1993, Haitian Centers Council v. Sale.
73. Quoted in Richard Cole, " 'HIV Concentration Camp' Remains Despite Complaints by Feds, Military, " Associated Press, December 12, 1992. Johnson quotes "They're going to die anyway. "
74. Deposition of Claude Laguerre, February 20, 1993, Haitian Centers Council v. Sale, 45-46.
75. Deposition of Claude Laguerre, February 20, 1993, Haitian Centers Council v. Sale, 45-46.
76. Johnson stated: "[The] HIV+ Haitians remaining at Guantánamo live in camps surrounded by razor barbed wire. They tie plastic bags to the sides of the building to keep the rain out. They sleep on cots and hang sheets to create some semblance of privacy. They are guarded by the military and are not permitted to leave the camp, except under military escort. The Haitian detainees have been subjected to predawn military sweeps as they sleep by as many as 400 soldiers in full riot gear. They are confined like prisoners. "
77. The first group of HIV positive refugees released through Haitian Centers Council v. Sale arrived in the United States on April 5, 1993.
78. Quoted in Lizzy Ratner, "The Legacy of Guantánamo, " Nation, July 16, 2003.
79. Quoted in Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 66.
80. Koh, "The Haiti Paradigm, " 2397n32.
81. See Steven Greenhouse, "US Will Return Refugees to Cuba in Policy Switch, " New York Times, May 3, 1995.
82. Brandt Goldstein, "Book Presentation: Storming the Court: How a Band of Law Students Sued the President-and Won, " at Simpson, Thacher and Bartlett, New York, June 8, 2007.
83. George W. Bush to The Vice President, The Secretary of State, The Secretary of Defense, The Attorney General, Chief of Staff to the President, Director of Central Intelligence, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, memorandum, February 7, 2002, in Greenberg and Dratel, The Torture Papers, 119.
84. Haitian Centers Council v. Sale.
85. Joan Dayan, "Servile Law, " in Cities without Citizens, eds. Eduardo Cadava and Aaron Levy, Slought Books Theory Series (Philadelphia: Slought Foundation, 2004), 97.
86. Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I'm Dying (New York: Knopf, 2007).
87. Homeland Security Task Force Southeast, "Fact Sheet: Operation Vigilant Sentry, " March 7, 2007, hstfse. uscgnews. com/go/doc/1038/148670/FACT-SHEET-Operation-Vigilant-Sentry.
88. The state spent $16.5 million on a camp designed to hold 10,000 people. Jane Sutton, "US Readying Guantánamo Base for Migrant Influx, " Reuters US, October 24, 2007, www.reuters.com/article/2007/10/24/us-bush-cuba-Guantánamo-idUSN2414080320071024.
89. Temporary Protected Status (TPS) allowed Haitian nationals in the United States to live without fear of removal for eighteen months; however, TPS withheld amnesty from undocumented migrants and permanent residence from migrants on temporary visas. Further, the US state could grant TPS while denying the existence of Haitian refugees, since TPS is designed for "those aliens who may not meet the legal definition of refugee but are nonetheless fleeing-or reluctant to return to-potentially dangerous situations. " Immigration Policy Center, "Granting Refuge: Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians in the United States, " January 22, 2010, American Immigration Council, www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/ granting-refuge-temporary-protected-status-tps-haitians-united-states.
90. Quoted in Albor Ruiz, "It's Racism, Not Terror, Keeping Haitians Out, " New York Daily News, December 2, 2004, articles. nydailynews. com/2004-12-02/local/18284879_1 _haitians-haiti-today-asylum-seeker.
91. See also Bill Frelick, "Paradigm Shifts in the International Responses to Refugees, " in Fear of Persecution: Global Human Rights, International Law, and Human Well-Being, ed. James D. White and Anthony J. Marsella (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), 54.
92. See also Braziel, "Haiti, Guantánamo, and the 'One Indispensable Nation,' " 145.