Haitian deportation process is unfair: Since when does the government have the right to secretly pick up U.S. residents and ship them to their deaths?

From [HERE] By Chuck Strouse 

Valentine's Day has just passed, and a single tear rolls down Claudine Magloire's perfect left cheek. She balls up tight, knees to chin, on a fluffy beige couch then gazes across her Pompano Beach townhouse at a framed watercolor. Two teddy bears, two swallows, and two plump red hearts deliver a message. To remember you, it reads in French. Souvenir toi.

Of the artist, 34-year-old Wildrick Guerrier, she sobs: "He's gone. He went to the bathroom. There was one cough... Then he was dead... The U.S. government killed him."

Wildrick was Claudine's lover and partner. He died suddenly last month — possibly of cholera — in Haiti after the Obama administration deported him and 26 other Haitian-Americans to their earthquake-wracked homeland. Such deportations had been suspended after the January 12, 2010, catastrophe, but this past December, agents swept up more than 350 others, about 100 from Florida, and delivered them to internment camps in a remote part of Louisiana. They await the dreaded trip back to their ruined island and, perhaps, the same painful end.

After Guerrier's death, newspaper stories were printed and mostly forgotten. Even the first black President brushed aside concerns about the world's first black republic. Neither he nor his administration is investigating. And, citing "privacy policies," his people refuse to release the names of those in custody. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez won't even say whether deportations have been suspended, a fact communicated to activists two weeks ago. "There haven't been any additional removals, and removals have not been suspended," she told me last week. Huh?

There's outrage in all this. Since when does the government have the right to secretly pick up U.S. residents and ship them to their deaths — even if they have criminal records? Indeed at least one of those sent to Haiti, Lyglenson Lemorin, has never been convicted of anything.

But there's also hyperbole in activists' responses. "No one should be deported to Haiti now," said Randy McGrorty, chief executive of Catholic Charities Legal Services Miami at a press conference earlier this month, "no matter what crime they committed." No one cared to ask if American taxpayers should feed and clothe noncitizen rapists and killers.

So I've spent the last couple weeks investigating Guerrier and another Miamian awaiting deportation in Louisiana, Elliott Longchamps. A close look at their lives and criminal records yields the following: bureaucratic ineptitude, government hypocrisy, and heinous violence. Longchamps, who's still in Louisiana, deserves the boot. Wildrick Guerrier didn't. And with the government unreasonably withholding names, it's hard to tell how many innocents like Guerrier are awaiting deportation.

The tragic love story of Claudine and Wildrick is this tale's beginning. She's a kind, professional woman who was born in Cap-Haitïen and moved to Fort Pierce with her family as an 8-year-old. A cheerleader, track star, and soccer player, she graduated from Fort Pierce Central High and became a single mom at age 18. Her boyfriend at the time disappeared, but she found work as an AT&T telemarketer in Fort Lauderdale and raised her playful son, Will.

It was off Sunrise Boulevard that she met Wildrick. He had come to the United States from Port-de-Paix as a 16-year-old, then played soccer at Edison Senior High in Miami. Skinny and mellow, he lived in Miami Shores across the street from Barry University with his mom, Chantal, who gave birth to two sons after arriving. Wildrick helped raise them until taking a job driving a forklift at Sun-Sentinel in Deerfield Beach in 1998.

Wildrick's cousin Mona lived near Claudine. One day, he piloted a black Nissan down their street and stopped to ask Claudine's name. They chatted. Soon he fell in love — not with her, but with then four-year-old Will.

"They'd play soccer and football, roll around a lot," Claudine remembers. "They'd go everywhere together. Wildrick was a real father figure to him." The then 22-year-old cycled through jobs at KFC and in a metals factory, often working nights. Sometimes he'd care for Will during the day, feeding him ice cream and candy. On weekends, Claudine would leave the boy with an aunt and visit Haitian nightclubs in Miami or Hallandale. She'd go with groups of four, five, or six people including Wildrick. "He always had a girlfriend," Claudine recalls. "We were like brother and sister."

What Claudine, now a mortgage loan specialist for Bank of America, didn't know back then was that Wildrick had trouble with the law. It started small, Broward County records show. He was busted in 1997 for driving without a license. He had a learner's permit but received a ticket. Three years later, he was nailed for possession of narcotics after cops found a film canister with "particles of cocaine" on Andrews Avenue, where he hung out, according to a police report. Those charges were dismissed.

"He never did drugs, but every time he hung out with the boys, he got in trouble," Claudine says. "I tried to get him away from them... and mostly I did."

His problems with the law escalated in 2002, when he was stopped by a Fort Lauderdale police officer. Identified in records as R. Fernandez, the cop claimed Wildrick had suddenly pulled his car to the side of NW Ninth Avenue in Fort Lauderdale. After the officer flashed his lights and siren, Wildrick attempted to run, and the two scuffled. Wildrick kicked the cop in the groin. Fernandez kicked him back, then arrested him after help arrived. In a deposition, Fernandez acknowledged he had not been injured. "I went home and took some painkiller and that was it," he said. Wildrick spent four months in jail.