LCLAA Calls on the Biden Administration to Immediately Stop the Forced Return of Haitian Migrants
MEDIA STATEMENT
September 21, 2021
Contact: Pablo Stein
pstein@lclaa.org | (202) 508-6989
Washington, DC – The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement’s (LCLAA) is appalled by the forced return of Haitian migrants in Del Rio, TX without allowing for asylum applications, and we call on the Biden administration to immediately stop these inhumane deportations. LCLAA further calls on the administration to cease invoking Title 42 to justify the deportations—a Trump-era policy that was recently declared unlawful by the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
The Haitian migrants who are gathering on our southern border are escaping years of economic and social precarity in their home country resulting from the natural disasters, weak labor rights, organized crime, and political instability in which the US has often been complicit. Furthermore, our current immigration policy already deems Haiti an unsafe destination for deportations. Haitian migrants arriving at our borders deserve a chance to apply for asylum and should not be transported to unsafe locations.
As Latino workers, we stand by our Haitian brothers and sisters at home and in the diaspora in their struggle for labor rights and a strong democracy. We will continue to show our solidarity through every means possible, including by advocating for comprehensive and humane immigration reform and a democracy-oriented foreign policy that prioritizes a home-grown solution to the Haitian crisis.
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The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) is the leading national organization for Latino(a) workers and their families. LCLAA was born in 1972 out of the need to educate, organize and mobilize Latinos in the labor movement and has expanded its influence to organize Latinos in an effort to impact workers’ rights and their influence in the political process. LCLAA represents the interest of more than 2 million Latino workers in the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), The Change to Win Federation, independent unions and all their affiliate unions. Visit LCLAA on the web at www.lclaa.org, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram