Report details hardships of US deportees sent to gang-hit Haiti

Human Rights Watch released a report on Monday documenting the difficulties faced by hundreds of people deported by the United States to Haiti, where gang violence is surging and hunger and poverty are deepening. The report offers a rare close look at the lives of deportees who have largely avoided speaking with journalists because they fear for their safety.

More than 470 people have been deported to Haiti since July, including individuals who lost Temporary Protected Status, which had allowed them to live and work legally in the US. Because the main international airport in Port-au-Prince is considered too dangerous due to persistent gang violence, deportation flights are landing in the northern city of Cap-Haitien. Mayor Michel Saint-Croix told Human Rights Watch that the city's population has tripled to more than 1 million in the past two years as it absorbs deportees and Haitians fleeing violence elsewhere.

The arrivals have strained already limited resources. Haitian migration officials said the US government has told them it planned to send as many as two deportation flights a week, each carrying about 200 people.

Human Rights Watch said it interviewed 44 deportees as well as Haitian and international officials. Deportees reported going for hours without food or water and days without bathing or changing clothes while held at US immigration detention facilities. They said their belongings, including official documents and money, were not returned when they arrived in Haiti. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The rights group said it reviewed passenger manifests for two deportation flights in August. Neither contained information about the deportees' immigration status or the grounds for their removal.

Most of the 44 deportees interviewed said they had fled Haiti's worsening security and humanitarian crises and settled in US states including Florida, New York, Indiana and Ohio, finding work in construction, healthcare and manufacturing. Many said they were from Port-au-Prince or surrounding areas, where armed men control an estimated 70% of the capital. Others said they were from the Artibonite region, which is under assault by violent gangs.

The deportees had lived in the US for anywhere from two to 14 years. Among them was a 38-year-old man who said he had lived in Florida since December 2019 and worked at the same hotel for more than six years. His wife and 5-year-old son, a US citizen, remain in Florida. "I worked so that he could grow up without the fear, violence, and uncertainty that I had known in Haiti," the man was quoted as saying. He and several others said they had Temporary Protected Status, though the rights group noted it could not independently verify those claims.

A 47-year-old woman said she had lived in Miami with her US-citizen husband and was arrested when she attended an interview to apply for permanent residence. Another deportee was a 24-year-old nursing assistant student who said she applied for asylum after fleeing Haiti in 2023 when gangs attacked her community.

According to the report, most interviewees said authorities did not allow them to contact their lawyers or appear before an immigration judge, while many received little or no information about their pending asylum claims, the grounds for their detention, or how they could challenge their deportation.

At least 19,380 people were reported killed across Haiti between January 2023 and June 2026, according to the United Nations. Hunger and poverty are also deepening as Haitian police and a UN-backed mission struggle to contain gang violence. More than 253,000 children aged six months to 5 years are expected to suffer acute malnutrition in the coming months, according to a new report by Haiti's government and agencies including UNICEF.

"The United States is returning people, some with pending asylum claims, to a country that doesn't have the capacity to protect them from violence, let alone help them find food and shelter," said Nathalye Cotrino, senior Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch. "The US government should immediately halt these removals."

Deportees arriving in Haiti are given a simple meal, a drink and about $77 in cash. After registering, they were left to fend for themselves, and many did not know what to do or where to go next, the report said.