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Posted Monday, December 8, 2008
                             
After a pause, deportations to storm-crippled, fast growing violent Haiti resume
 
By The Associated Press

MIAMI (AP) -- Deportations to Haiti have resumed after being suspended for nearly three months following a wave of deadly storms that racked the country, federal immigration officials said Monday. Immigration officials temporarily stopped returning residents to Haiti in September after hundreds were killed in four storms.

'The individuals being returned have final orders of removal and the necessary travel documents,'' ICE spokeswoman Nicole Navas said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. ''We have contacted interested members of Congress to apprise them of the reinstituted removals.''

Navas didn't provide further details on the timing of the flights or discuss numbers of deportees. '

'This decision only complicates the Haitian government's ongoing recovery effort,'' U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Florida Democrat, said in an e-mail. ''The Bush administration has less than six weeks to do the right thing and grant Haitians Temporary Protective Status.''

Leaders of the Haitian commmunity in Florida and human rights advocates argue that conditions have been slow to improve since at least 425 people were killed and thousands left homeless by severe flooding after the storms.

Late last month, the mayor of Port-au-Prince estimated that 60 percent of the city's buildings were unsafe, built shoddily and now standing on ground weakened by a torrential hurricane season. A school collapse last month killed nearly 100 people.

Even before the storms, skyrocketing food prices had sparked violent protests.

''Deportations at this time are simply inhumane, sending people to conditions of famine and disease. The change in policy is unwarranted by reports on the ground which confirm that the humanitarian crisis in Haiti continues and worsens,'' said Randy McGrorty, chief executive officer of Catholic Charities Legal Services in Miami.

Some South Florida congressional members, who represent the largest Haitian community in the U.S., have said they were disappointed that Haitians have not been granted temporary protected status.

The status allows immigrants from countries experiencing armed conflict or environmental disasters to stay and work in the U.S. for a limited time. It has been granted to a handful of African and Central American countries.

---- Associated Press Writer Jennifer Kay contributed to this report.
                                                
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