Death squad leader, detainees who tested positive for COVID on Haiti deportation flight

Haitian rights activists are urging the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to halt the deportation of a notorious death squad leader to Haiti on Tuesday, and say the scheduled deportation flight risks becoming a vector for transmission of the coronavirus among passengers, the crew and the people of Haiti.

Emmanuel “Toto” Constant — a former strongman who once boasted that Vodou and the CIA protected him — is among 78 Haitian nationals scheduled to be removed from the United States, according to the flight’s manifest viewed by the Miami Herald.

Constant and the brutal paramilitary group he founded, the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, or FRAPH, rose to prominence after the 1991 coup against former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. They have been linked to the killings of at least 3,000 Aristide supporters in Haiti, as well as the rape and torture of others and attacks against U.S. and U.N. diplomats.

While Constant, 63, told the Herald two weeks ago from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center that he did not have COVID-19, immigration advocates say at least nine other deportees who are scheduled to fly with him on Tuesday have tested positive for the disease, and that deporting them will be detrimental to Haiti. The number of infections and deaths in Haiti are quickly escalating.

In at least one instance, the Herald has learned that one of the detainees was placed back into the general population of the ICE detention center in Pine Prairie, Louisiana, without being given a second COVID-19 test, which is generally performed to make sure the person no longer can transmit the disease to others.

Steve Forester, the immigration policy coordinator for the Boston-based Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, said other detainees have told similar stories of not being re-tested before they were returned to the general population. Detainees have also told their families that they were given the quick, 15-minute COVID test, rather than the more accurate laboratory test called a PCR test, Forester said.

The quicker test has been rejected even by Haiti’s health ministry to confirm COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and remains controversial because of its high propensity for error.

Haiti currently has 865 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infections, an increase of 555 cases in just nine days. Its 26 reported deaths give it a death rate of 33 percent, one of the highest in the Caribbean.

DHS has not responded to repeated inquiries from the Herald about its testing methods or about Constant, whose scheduled deportation has also caught the attention of Democratic members of Congress, Andy Levin of Michigan and Maxine Waters of California. Both have asked DHS and the State Department to postpone Constant’s removal from the U.S. until Haiti can provide a plan on how it will protect his victims, and prosecute him.

One of those victims, Fritz Désir, told the Herald in a telephone interview from Haiti that Constant’s imminent return creates a lot of worry and uncertainty about whether victims will even find justice.

“There are all kinds of worry about whether you even have a state ready to assume its responsibility when it comes to justice,” said Désir. “But even if the justice system isn’t ready, we can’t just stand with our arms crossed. We will need to assume our responsibility to make sure that we find justice given what he did to the population.”

Désir, 52, said he was awakened at 3 a.m. on April 22, 1994, to the sounds of gunshots and screams in the village of Raboteau on the outskirts of Gonaives in the Artibonite Valley.

“It was a very sad day...They killed a lot of people in the area,” said Désir, adding that he and eight of his friends were beaten, tied with a rope and brutally attacked by FRAPH’s forces.

Haitian activists said sending Constant to Haiti now, where many of his sympathizers still remain in positions of power, would be a travesty.

“Constant is a... human rights violator and his return during this time of crisis would cause even more political upheaval and chaos in Haiti,” said Marleine Bastien, executive Director of Family Action Network Movement. “Deporting him and the nine sick detainees sets a dangerous precedent and the repercussions are irreparable.”

Tuesday’s flight will be the fourth ICE Air deportation flight to Haiti since last month, despite repeated requests from lawmakers, immigration, Haitian activists and a Haitian government scientific panel to halt all deportations until the pandemic is over.

Haiti currently has fewer than 300 beds to treat individuals infected with COVID-19, which has also started to spread in the country’s overcrowded prison system. At least 13 prisoners have tested positive for the disease since May 15.

Even so, two Port-au-Prince-based human rights organizations — the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux and the National Human Rights Defense Network — are demanding Constant’s immediate arrest if the Trump administration moves ahead with his removal. Constant is considered a fugitive in Haiti, where he was convicted of murder in absentia in November 2000 after being linked to the 1994 Raboteau massacre. Following the killings, he fled to the U.S. on Christmas Eve via Puerto Rico on a valid U.S. visa.

“They need to apply the law,” said Mario Joseph, who served as the lead attorney for Constant’s victims during the trial. A Haitian jury convicted 53 individuals for the killings, including Constant and 14 others in absentia. The court also ordered that the defendants pay millions of dollars in civil damages. In 2005, Haiti’s high court overturned the sentences for those who had been tried in person. Constant’s conviction still stands.

Joseph noted that those linked to the killings continue to walk free. Even worse, one of FRAPH’s commanders, Jean-Robert Gabriel, today occupies a high post in President Jovenel Moïse’s revived army. Like Constant, he was convicted in absentia for the 1994 massacre.

Constant has been a high-profile figure associated with terror and death in Haiti for years. He once said that while leading FRAPH, he also worked for the CIA. In 2008, he was convicted of mortgage fraud and larceny in New York and sentenced to 37 years in state prison but was released into immigration custody last month after serving 12 years.

Initially scheduled to fly to Haiti on May 11, his deportation was canceled after a piece was posted about the move on the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Haiti Relief and Reconstruction Watch blog. Also halted was the removal of at least five other Haitian nationals after the Herald reported they had tested positive for COVID-19.

Now all are back on the flight, raising alarm among immigration advocates who say that there is no evidence that the detainees are coronavirus-free. In several instances, detainees’ lawyers and families have told advocates that they were returned to the general population inside the detention center without a COVID-19 test.