Coalition’s letter urges accountability for abuse of Haitian immigrants

By Elket Rodríguez

Fellowship Southwest and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship have joined a broad coalition of faith organizations and faith leaders who have urged the Biden Administration to hold U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers accountable for abusing Haitian migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border. 

The coalition has asked the administration to pursue all possible procedures that would guarantee humanitarian protection for the Haitians.

The coalition supporting Haitian immigrants includes 177 faith organizations and 1,947 faith leaders and people of faith from 49 states. 

The group sent a letter to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, asking them to stop deportation flights to Haiti. The letter also asked the administration to end Title 42 expulsions, a process that began under the previous administration and cites COVID-related public health concerns as a reason for removing migrants from U.S. soil.

The letter claimed back-to-back disasters—the 7.2-magnitude earthquake that occurred Aug. 14, as well as tropical storm Grace and subsequent widespread landslides—as only the latest causes for devastation that has afflicted Haiti, already reeling from political and economic turmoil. 

Deportation of Haitians under these circumstances is cruel and immoral, the letter stressed. 

Natural disasters and political turmoil have resulted in “over 2,200 people killed, 12,200 injured and 130,000 homes destroyed,” the letter reported. 

Fellowship Southwest’s immigrant relief ministry is responding to the devastating effects of migrant expulsion through Title 42. Pastor Eleuterio González of Iglesia Valle de Beraca in Matamoros, Mexico—across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas—feeds, shelters and protects more than 700 Haitian migrants. Israel Rodríguez-Segura, pastor of Primera Iglesia Bautista in Piedras Negras, Mexico—a much quieter city across from Eagle Pass, Texas—shelters dozens.  

“It does not go unnoticed that Black immigrants are often targets of the largest mass expulsions from the U.S.,” the letter stated. The plight of asylum seekers is a “challenge to our faith, which calls us to welcome the stranger,” it added. 

The coalition called on the U.S. government to “consider measures to address the factors driving forced displacement of Haitians.” 

To support Fellowship Southwest’s immigrant relief ministry, which feeds, shelters and protects immigrants across northern Mexico, click here.

Elket Rodríguez is the refugee and immigrant missions and advocacy specialist for Fellowship Southwest and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.