KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC—The Andrew Holness-led administration has defended its decision to send home 12 of the 16 Haitians who arrived on the island in March to care for 59 disabled orphans who were allowed to enter Jamaica as part of a humanitarian effort led by the international charity organization Mustard Seed Communities.
The Haitians were returned at midnight on Tuesday.
Speaking with the Jamaica Observer on Wednesday, National Security Minister Dr. Horace Chang said they were sent home based on security concerns and indications that the claim that they were caregivers for the orphans was untrue.
According to Chang, the Government had no hesitation in allowing the orphans and caregivers onto the island based on the crisis in Haiti.
He said the authorities soon found out that only two were caregivers.
“When we realized that 14 of the so-called caregivers were here staying in breach of their conditions, they were absconding, and one… who seems to be a troublemaker, had gotten a car from somebody…and was driving around making mischief and taking the people out — he is the one believed to have taken the 14-year-old child out of Kingston Public Hospital with a friend of his — the police are looking for him,” said Chang about one of the orphans who has not been seen since he was released from the Corporate Area health facility where he had been taken for treatment.
“They [the Haitian caregivers] then became abusive to the people at Jacob’s Ladder [where the orphans are being housed], misbehaving, and when the police went there, they were hostile to the police. So we decided, through immigration, that they were in breach of their conditions, they came under pretense, and we were going to deport them, so we deported them,” Chang said.
The National Security Minister told the Jamaica Observer that the “troublemaker” and another of the so-called caregivers have not yet been found.
However, two other Haitians, who had been previously ordered deported and were in detention, were included in the group shipped out at midnight Tuesday.
“The people who came here were illegal migrants in our country, and I have the law behind me to send them back where they came from, and they were all of the questionable characters,” said Chang, who added that he is now considering putting a prohibition order on Susie Krabacher, the founder of HaitiChildren, who organized the mission to take the Haitian orphans here.
“We have refused her landing here three times and are considering placing a prohibition order. The entire scheme was dishonest, and if it had not been for the integrity, strength, and character of the Mustard Seed Communities, a respected international Catholic charity, they would have drawn the country through the mud. The private sector and the Government will help Mustard Seed manage, but we have sent home these people who are troublemakers,” said Chang.
He said the police are tracking an address in the Corporate Are and a school in Ocho Rios, in the northern parish of St Ann, as the search for the two missing so-called caregivers continues.
He was responding to reports that the situation involving the ten deported caregivers escalated drastically on Tuesday as they were confined to a room “all weekend” into Tuesday night.
The Jamaica Observer article says a bus drove up onto Jacob’s Ladder compound along with the police, which signaled the end of the road for the so-called caregivers.
“They ordered the caregivers to get on the bus to ( the eastern parish of) Portland. The lawyer called the police, and they would not disclose the location to her; they would only be brought to a facility in Portland,” a source told the Jamaica Observer.
According to the source, even after submitting asylum claims on behalf of the 12 caregivers, human rights lawyer Malene Alleyne failed in a bid to prevent local authorities from sending them back to Haiti.
Alleyne, who is representing the group that brought the children in from Haiti, described the situation as an unprecedented scale of cruelty to humanity in Jamaica.
Meanwhile, Haiti Children’s operators have insisted that the caregivers were given permission to leave the compound each time and were never missing. They claim that the caregivers worked on a shift system, seeking permission each time to leave the compound and always returning.
On Wednesday, Krabacher rejected the allegation that Haitian gangsters were among the caregivers who came to Jamaica.
Krabacher told the Jamaica Observer that the Jamaican authorities have made them look like criminals.
“Most of them worked with us for more than ten years. One of the deportees was a nurse who had worked with us for 17 years. They thought they were welcome. They were only doing their jobs,” said Krabacher.
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