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Recent Articles By Janine Zeitlin

National Features

Swami Lalitananda planned to hit the gym this past March 28. But then she decided on an early-morning stroll along Hallandale Beach.

She crossed A1A and watched the 15 mile-per-hour winds whip whitecaps offshore. A few minutes later, shortly after 8 a.m., the blue-eyed, 64-year-old retired teacher spotted dozens of people plunging into the surf from a tiny wooden boat with a shredded sail and tipping mast. They slapped at waves and scrambled to shore.

She stopped dead. From the line of luxury high-rises to her left, residents used binoculars to spy the scene unfolding below them.

A few feet from Lalitananda, two policewomen waded into the water to fish out the motionless body of a gaunt black man. He wore blue plaid boxer shorts and a ripped mesh basketball jersey. The rescue workers laid him on his back with his feet pointing toward the ocean.

As she peered at the young man, Lalitananda said a prayer. "God, if there's any life in him, let him be resuscitated. Let him know he really reached his goal — the shores of America."

Nearby, Charles, a young orphan, trudged through the chop to the beach. Then he began pacing, looking for his older brother, who had disappeared during the voyage. Charles clung to the hope that his brother had been locked away somewhere on the boat.

Two crew members, he would later claim, saw him and growled, "We'll kill you if you tell anyone your brother died."

Daniel Batiste, 25 years old, also waded ashore. He had assumed his death would have come before this day. It was the first land he had seen in 22 days. Where am I? he thought and joined dozens of other dazed Haitian men, women, and children on the sandy beach.

Rescue workers shepherded Charles, Daniel, and 99 others from the spot behind The Beach Club's opulent condo towers to a nearby fire station, and draped them, shivering and bruised, in white blankets. They were offered water and dry clothes to replace garments that reeked of fuel.

After a few minutes, Lalitananda left the scene. She couldn't stop looking behind her at the corpse on the beach. He must have been a very good soul, she thought.

The man pulled to shore would later be identified as 24-year-old Haitian refugee Lifaite Lully. He was pronounced dead at 8:15 a.m., and his body was covered with a white sheet. Soon the boat wobbled free from a sandbar and ran aground on the beach. Authorities found one refugee onboard in shock and tightly grasping two ropes.

The men, women, and children had boarded that flimsy 40-foot sailboat to escape curses, slavery, political slaughter, and hunger. Smugglers had crammed them into the hold like animals, along with concrete bags to prevent capsizing. They had lost their way, and after food and water were exhausted, survived for a week on Colgate toothpaste, salty rice, and seawater.

Right minds wafted to sea. Those onboard the ship claim crew members bludgeoned some passengers and killed one, maybe more, before they finally made it to the States. It was the largest landing of Haitians in the continental United States since October 2002, when more than 200 migrants reached Key Biscayne, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Local Haitians and advocates sprang into action. A 15-day hunger strike, a massive street protest, and headlines across America demanded fairness for the troubled souls. Then the noise stopped. For the past eight months, bewildered family members have watched as the government has warehoused their loved ones in secrecy behind barbed wire in Pompano Beach and sent them back to Haiti one by one. Prayers to God or vodou spirits haven't saved them. Nor have immigration lawyers.

"The whole world saw them on the TV," says Cedelia Calixte, a 28-year-old Fort Lauderdale resident and godmother of a refugee in his twenties who was deported on Halloween. Family members have not heard from him since. "They put them away like they were going to do something, and when everybody was sleeping, they sent them away, piece by piece."

From some angles, the Broward Transitional Center on Powerline Road in Pompano looks like the Quinta Inn it was supposed to become before the government took over and opened the center in 1998. People lounge on benches. Soda machines and pay phones punctuate outdoor hallways. Balconies face a courtyard with a shoddy putt-putt course where Midwestern families might have slathered on sunscreen to tan in the Florida sun.

But here pay-per-view is not an option. Small rooms fit six in bunk beds. A line of hundreds of refugees in crossing-guard orange snakes through halls and spills outside at mealtime. Fences at least 10 feet high and topped with barbed wire divide women from men.

Up to four hundred men and 200 women live at the center. They await immigration court decisions on their requests for asylum in the United States. Asian, Hispanic, and Eastern European faces are sprinkled throughout the place. Five months after the landing in Hallandale Beach, a few of the Haitians remain. Many have been sent home to a country corroded with crime and poverty.

"Every time I say things can't get worse for the Haitians, they do, so I've stop saying it," says Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, which handled 37 of the Hallandale refugees' cases. "There have been so many harsh measures directed at Haitians it's hard to envision an end in sight."

Indeed Haitians have been leaving their half of the island of Hispaniola, about 700 miles from Miami, on boats for decades.

Write Your Comment show comments (6)

  1. Excellent writing by the author... Something needs to be done about this problem, Haitians just want a better life.

    Comment by bearsfan — November 28, 2007 @ 10:26PM

  2. This situation is expected especially during an era of anti-immigrants in the U.S. I am not surprised that the Haitians are the most affected and victimized by this process at all. Look at our conditions in South Florida in the US at large and around the globe. As immigrants we are shunned, discriminated against and treated as outcasts. This of course is pay back for a Revolutionary past where slaves rose up and beat down a tyranical system that was abusive, oppressive and unfair. What the Haitian African slaves did was the right thing to do.As all oppressed people should use that as inspiration for their battles against tyranny everywhere. They treat us like some kind of mad people disease freaks with no conscience and not worth the humanity that we are granted. Well, that is wrong because the fight will always be waged between right and wrong or good and bad better yet, blessed versus evil. And we know that David always beats goliath. That young man used a pebble to kill a tyrant Haitians use their beliefs and faith and courage to go on. We will persevere but this damnation cannot go on.
    Life in South Florida was never good but for awhile with the elections of some Haitians to local political offices and the rising of some new organizations in our midst we had some hope. It was great too that Aristide was re-selected to office in the Nation State of Haiti but of course things began to unravel when the right wings around the globe primarily in the US, Canada, France and Latin America conspired to bring down a government put in power by the majority of the people. I do believe that Aristide and his family were forced into getting on a plane out of Haiti. That is technically kidnapping and he deserves to return home and fight for the people. The overwhelming majority of whom continue to be abused and victimized and mistreated by the UN forces and/or MINUSTAH.
    We are facing an existentialist crisis at this time. Who cares about us? Our leaders are selling us out for crumbs. Aristide's policies of "compromise" or settling for the lesser of many evils led us straight into an impossible situation. This he seemed to believe would have been avoided by his humbling acts in the face of Western corruption, racism and schisms. We knew better, they were coming and he should have been better prepared. Instead, he like so many others before him and so many who hide behind their nice artificial smiles and made up faces. Their fake hair, permed or straightened to resemble the massahs, their anglocized names and accents, their seemingly humble demeanor, non-threatening postures all to register a willingness to making it. Well, it ain't working. The few are getting the few crumbs and their hate filled hearts and bodies stand and smirk at the rest who are being sacrificed every day, hour, moment so they could keep their positions. Aristide sold out the people when he handed over Ketant, a so-called drug trafficker to the tyrants in the US. That kind of extradition is illegal and cocaine and marijuana use is a personal issue. The problem is with a system, a culture and society that sanctions abuse but gives no punishments to the abusers because they are the gatekeepers and lawmakers. It is wrong for sick people to be denied healthcare because they have no money. Universal healthcare now decriminalize marijuana, cocaine and heroine drug use now!

    Aristide helped the war on the poor Haitians in the ghettos of South Florida and elsewhere in the US. He set the ball in motion by letting them take Ketant and selling out the so-called gang bangers in places like Cite Soleil. And now of course the parrot Preval is waging the same war to keep his position. They've sold us to the lwas of lotbo. We have to fend for ourselves. It was inevetible that the anti-immigrant atmosphere would adversely affect us the most. We are the last hired, first fired. We are the most victimized by the immigration process it is no coincidence that we have the least success as immigrants (if we're counting all the kkkapital).

    Some want us to believe that the anti immigrant atmosphere in the US being waged primarily by the working poor whites who feel that the U.S. has to remain "sovereign" and protecting its borders is a necessary act. Excuse me, why didn't someone tell that to your ancestors when they came by boatloads and pushed and shoved and shot and murdered the tribal groups out of existance, land, rights and territory? Who processed your assess here? Also, I am tired of feeling sorry for poor white folks even the ones with their brown babies. They ALWAYS have more rights than the black folks. Walk around South Florida and see. Black folks in fact have stepped in line and willingly give them their positions. We come to this country and fight like hell to transform into them, check out our hairtyles and clothing and speech patterns and even culture and social life. Out marrying will not solve the problem. Brown babies will not be the messiahs nor will talking white or acting white or e-racing our racial identity change our conditions.

    I feel a great deal of pain and sympathy for the folks who risk all to come here. I realize that Haiti is a war torn nation state at this time. And this makes the condition right for fleeing. And the flight will be painful and the fleeing will come with empty bags. And that is ultimately a basis for asylum denial. We have no kkkapital and the world does not see fit to help us gain access to any. Unlike Jamaicans or even Trinidadians or Black Cubans, Dominicans our ethnicity has no currency anywhere. The solutions are radical unfortunately few if any of us are brave enough to undertake them.

    Blessings my people. Godspeed.

    Comment by Marie Nadine Pierre — November 29, 2007 @ 12:38AM

  3. Compelling, detailed story. One that needed to be told. Ms. Zeitlin did a wonderful job.

    Comment by Jessica Guenzel — December 1, 2007 @ 12:49AM

  4. i pray everytime that i hear of the haitians of the flordia shores that these people do not get sent back. it's funny how after thousands of mexicans have come here the same way and not as many haitians have really had a chance here and they depart them on the spot, some comments i have read states that the haitie people are mean people if u ask me in this world people of all races can be mean don't stereotype the whole group thats not fair if, the cubans' come and a child is there they wait to take the child and give a good life here now that is wrong if a haitian child come and waste no time sending them back,something is wrong with the sytem!VERY UNFAIR!

    Comment by kim — December 25, 2007 @ 11:55PM

  5. i pray everytime that i hear of the haitians of the flordia shores that these people do not get sent back. it's funny how after thousands of mexicans have come here the same way and not as many haitians have really had a chance here and they depart them on the spot, some comments i have read states that the haitie people are mean people if u ask me in this world people of all races can be mean don't stereotype the whole group thats not fair if, the cubans' come and a child is there they wait to take the child and give a good life here now that is wrong if a haitian child come and waste no time sending them back,something is wrong with the sytem!VERY UNFAIR!

    Comment by kim — December 25, 2007 @ 11:57PM

  6. i pray everytime that i hear of the haitians of the flordia shores that these people do not get sent back. it's funny how after thousands of mexicans have come here the same way and not as many haitians have really had a chance here and they depart them on the spot, some comments i have read states that the haitie people are mean people if u ask me in this world people of all races can be mean don't stereotype the whole group thats not fair if, the cubans' come and a child is there they wait to take the child and give a good life here now that is wrong if a haitian child come and waste no time sending them back,something is wrong with the sytem!VERY UNFAIR!

    Comment by kim — December 25, 2007 @ 11:59PM

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