Asbury Park Mayor Joins Haitian Community Opposing Deportations

Carol Williams/Patch Staff

ASBURY PARK, NJ - Everything national ultimately becomes local and the decision recently by the Trump administration to end temporary protections to Haitian immigrants who fled after the 2010 earthquake. Mayor John B. Moor has reported he has reached out to the city's substantial Haitian community where residents are concerned with what the future may hold, particularly if people are forced to return to a country that has made little progress recovering from the disaster.

"Asbury Park has a large Haitian population and the city has reached out to the Haitian groups to see if we can get this overturned," said Moor, suggestion a resolution in support of the immigrants or legislature attention could help.

More than 59,000 victims of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake have been living in the U.S. under “temporary protected status” for the past seven years and earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security extended their status through January 2018, but officials in May said that individuals covered under that status should begin acquiring travel documents to return to Haiti. They have until July 2019 to return or face deportation. Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, those immigrants have had about 30,000 children who are United States citizens which would leave families with the heart-wrenching decision either to leave the children here with relatives or friends or return with them to a country which offers little real opportunity, Moor said. Haitians under the protected status also could decide to remain in the U.S. illegally only to face deportation if caught.

.The United States offered the protected status to Haitians after the January 2010 earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced more than a million and provoked a cholera outbreak. Haitians who entered the U.S. within a year of the disaster qualified for the status. Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, still struggles to recover from the earthquake and relies heavily on money its expatriates send home, Haitian advocates told the New York Times. The Haitian government had asked the administration of President Donald J. Trump to allow the Haitians to stay longer but immigration officials said the protections were being treated as it they were permanent. Since the announcement, thousands of Haitians living in this country have crossed the border into Canada, seeking safety there, according to news reports.

Haitians protesting in Miami after they learned deportations would increase.

Photograph by Alan Diaz/Associated Press