Hundreds of immigrants from Haiti claim to have been left stranded in Mexico following President Donald Trump’s announcement of changes to immigration policy in the US. Haitian nationals began arriving on the Southwest Border during early 2016, hoping to be able to cross over into the US.
US Customs and Border Protection statistics show that the agency has seen a rise in the number of Haitian immigrants with no legal US status arriving at border crossings. As many as 6234 undocumented immigrants from the island nation arrived at ports of entry on the border during the 2016 fiscal year, which was a massive increase compared to the figures for the previous fiscal year. A further 8275 Haitian immigrants were reported as arriving at such ports of entry by officials in the three months between the beginning of October and the end of December last year.
The Obama administration announced during last fall that the deportation of undocumented Haitian immigrants would be resumed following a six-year suspension, which had been instituted following the Haitian earthquake in 2010. Haitian immigrants say that deportations have rapidly increased since that announcement.
With the number of deportations, many immigrants had decided to temporarily remain in Mexico, in the hope that the situation would change with the arrival of a new administration. But they have now given up hope since the new immigration policies of the US were announced in January by President Donald Trump.