We must protect the right to seek asylum 

Our representatives must take a long, hard look at the ways our immigration and deportation systems are failing people who are in harm’s way.

Last month, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) ruled that a petition brought against the United States on behalf of six Haitian people who were deported to Haiti in the middle of the cholera epidemic may move forward. The ruling comes 10 years after the initial petition, which asserted that the U.S. deported the Haitian nationals without consideration for the human rights and humanitarian crisis that gripped the country, and which was in direct violation to the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man.  

The decision came on the heels of the 14-year anniversary of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti, taking the lives of more than 250,000 people, leaving thousands more wounded, displacing 1.5 million and igniting the deadly cholera epidemic. 

Despite the worst conditions and crisis in the country’s history, people are still being deported to Haiti. The signal that this case can move forward will mean consideration that the U.S. must balance humanitarian factors against the government’s interest in deportation whenever it seeks to send someone back to Haiti. 

The U.S. has a less than stellar track record when it comes to immigration, migration and human rights. In fiscal 2023, for example, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported more than 142,000 immigrants, nearly double the number from the year before. Nearly 18,000 of those deported were parents and children traveling together – surpassing the 14,400 removed under the Trump administration in fiscal 2020. 

In December 2023, a federal judge prohibited the separation of families at the border for the purposes of deterring immigration for eight years. But the court order does not cover the full scope of family separations wrought by the system of U.S. immigration enforcement: family separations are not just happening at the border. They happen every day in communities across the U.S. to longstanding residents, some of whom are mothers and fathers, because of the wayour current deportation system operates. 

U.S. immigration laws and procedures fail to account for an individual’s long-standing ties to the U.S. and fails to adequately protect individuals from the harms they may face upon deportation. Despite routinely recognizing the harsh and exceedingly dangerous realities people face when deported to their countries of origin through grants of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), the U.S. persists in deporting individuals ineligible for TPS or other exceedingly limited forms of humanitarian relief, separating them from their families and sending them into harm’s way.  

Parents subject to deportation with children who may have legal status in the U.S. are then forced to choose between having their children join them in a country where their security and well-being is directly at risk or finding alternative caretakers for their children in relative safety in the U.S., with hopes that opportunities for future reunification might emerge.  

As explicitly recognized by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the current deportation system — including the way the laws are currently written and applied — does not allow for a full assessment of humanitarian concerns. This includes a balancing of the real risk to health and safety deportation poses, longstanding family and other community ties to the U.S., and, most importantly, the severe harms potentially awaiting those who are deported. 

Though the commission will now move forward to determine whether the United States’s deportation of the six individuals violated their rights to due process, protection of family life, and health and wellbeing, 10 years have gone by. That’s 10 years the petitioners have had to navigate disease, extreme poverty and violence. Ten years of family separation. Ten years of being displaced.  

And they aren’t alone. 

In April 2021, President Biden expanded the number of Haitians who could stay in the U.S. after fleeing gang violence. Some were allowed to stay in the U.S. while their cases move their way through the immigration court system, but thousands were deported. In just one month, September 2021, 58 planes of migrants were expelled back to Haiti. According to the International Organization for Migration, in 2023, the U.S. deported 1,862 people to Haiti. 

Our representatives must take a long, hard look at the ways our immigration and deportation systems are failing people who are in harm’s way. We need to truly honor our obligations under international law, by reforming our immigration system in a way that protects the right to seek asylum, provides safeguards the due process rights of those subjected to deportation, and considers the totality of the circumstances that confront an individual and their family members if they are not accepted into or are deported from the U.S.  

Sarah Paoletti is a practice professor of law and director of the Transnational Legal Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. R. Denisse Cordova Montes is a lecturer in law and acting associate director of the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law.