U.S. Coast Guard Boosts Patrols Off Haiti
ABOARD THE U.S. COAST GUARD CUTTER DILIGENCE (AP) -- Dr. Daniel Garcia says it's the hardest job in his 6 1/2-year career with the U.S. Coast Guard: hunting down Haitians on homemade boats and returning them to the turmoil embroiling their homeland.
The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Diligence was among a dozen patrolling waters off Haiti on Sunday, a fleet increased from the usual two vessels to prevent a feared exodus.
Sea and air patrols have been stepped up since President Bush on Feb. 25 urged Haitians to "stay home" and warned anyone who did not would be repatriated.
That policy, announced as the United States was preparing to evacuate Americans from a dangerously volatile situation, has drawn criticism from human rights groups and some U.S. legislators. Critics say the United States is obligated by international law to grant asylum to people fleeing conflict zones.
On Feb. 27, Garcia's cutter encountered a 50-foot homemade wooden boat carrying 233 Haitians and brought them aboard.
Garcia spent four hours giving each one a physical checkup. He had to rely on a handful of English and Spanish speakers among the bedraggled boat people to translate the Haitians' native Creole.
He watched as they were dropped at the dock at Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince.
"Since my six-and-a-half years in the Coast Guard, this has been the most trying time," Garcia said, especially "seeing what they have to go back to."
"I don't blame them. I'd leave too," he told The Associated Press.
Officers said some of the boat people got unruly when they realized they were being returned to Haiti. A few had to be shackled because they didn't want to go back.
The group was among more than 904 boat people, including babies, to be repatriated by the Coast Guard since Bush stepped up the policy.
Many of the Haitians in February were left on the dock on the southern outskirts of the capital as militant Aristide loyalists were setting up flaming barricades and robbing people of cars and money.
The boat people had only bundles with blankets, clothing and meals of beans and rice that the Coast Guard gave them.
Most said they had left to escape Haiti's grinding poverty, not because of political motivations or fear of being swept up in the rebellion.
U.S. Marines had to guard the frightened returnees and Haitian Coast Guard officers trained their rifles on the taunting crowd to force a passage through for the refugees.
A reporter there watched them walking uncertainly, most barefoot, in the direction of the tumultuous capital - a city most had never visited many miles from northern hometowns cut off by the rebellion.
On Feb. 29, Aristide fled the country, under pressure from rebels advancing on the capital and U.S. and French calls for him to bow out.
In recent days, the cutters haven't come across any boats with migrant hopefuls. But they worry that could change.
In the early 1990s, some 65,000 Haitians were intercepted at sea as they tried to escape the Caribbean nation's brutal dictatorship and reach U.S. shores. With no leadership and much of the nation divided between Aristide opponents and supporters, many may opt to flee again.
It's not known how many die attempting to reach Florida in rickety overcrowded sloops. Haitian boat people rarely make the news unless dozens drown in a capsized boat.
On another cutter, the Escanaba, crew members scanned the ocean late Saturday in search of migrant boats. The cutter hadn't intercepted a Haitian boat since December, when 361 Haitians were traveling aboard a 54-foot sailboat.
It took the crew six hours to bring them all aboard. The wooden boat was littered with human waste. The cutter did not have enough blankets and clothes on board to accommodate the Haitians, so crew members gave up some of their own.
One crew member, a Haitian-American, helped translate for the migrants along with another translator who was on board. Some told him to let them go, that he should understand their situation since he was one of them.
But the crew member, Petty Officer Fritzgerald Saintime, said he didn't feel too guilty about returning the Haitians.
"There's no way they were going to make it" to Miami, Saintime said. "We definitely saved their lives."
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Thanks to our Coast Guard!