With Haiti in turmoil, remember the lessons of a 1980s migrant surge in South Florida | Opinion

The potential for a surge of Haitians arriving in South Florida after fleeing gang violence stirs memories of an earlier time when migrants fled political persecution in Haiti under the dictatorial regime of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.

The problems those earlier migrants encountered were succinctly described in the Miami Herald in a sadly observant column about their plight. It arguably offers us lessons on how not to deal with what may happen if large numbers of Haitians try to flee their homeland again:

“It was depressing. Depressing because the human soul shrinks when it is snagged on the briars of the law, unable to go forward, unable to go back, denied the means to do anything but do … nothing. All day, every day, week after week upon month following month, there is almost nothing for the Haitians at Krome to do except nothing.”

Those words, written by the Miami Herald’s then-Editor Jim Hampton, appeared on the front page of the newspaper’s April 23, 1983, edition — beneath a story announcing that the Herald had won a Pulitzer Prize for its editorials about the deplorable conditions at the Krome Avenue Detention Center, where Haitian migrants were being detained in a form of legal limbo.

In his column, Hampton explained the crux of the problem, bureaucratic in nature, which is recurring today at our nation’s southern border and possibly at other points of entry:

“Until 1981, the 600 or so Haitians imprisoned indefinitely at Krome last week would have been processed and released to relatives or others.

“No more. The Reagan administration stopped that. Instead, it ordered all [undocumented] immigrants, not just Haitians, detained until their requests to enter the United States can be heard and adjudicated.”

He went on to say that most immigrants without documents — except Haitians — went through a relatively swift process, two or three days. Within that time, most non-Haitians would have a hearing. They would be denied refugee status and quickly deported.

Haitians, though, he wrote, “routinely request political asylum. Just as routinely that request catapults them into the legal thicket. Two Miami federal judges have ruled that each Haitian must be granted certain due-process rights.”

As Hampton explained, those rights included access to a lawyer, a right to appeal if asylum were denied and a Creole translator for those who didn’t speak English. Few lawyers or translators were available, and the federal government didn’t seem to be in a hurry to find them.

So many Haitians were stuck. The federal government argued that they couldn’t stay. The migrants believed, credibly, that they couldn’t go back to Haiti — where, nowadays, conditions are even worse than they were then.

Fortunately, Hampton’s persistence in securing clearance for the Herald’s Editorial Board to visit Krome enabled the writers to shine a spotlight on details of the dire situation there, eventually leading to changes meant to end such an indefinite detention.

That was then. This is now. Already there’s talk of where to detain any Haitians who may flee, assuming they manage to survive the treacherous ocean voyage to South Florida in overloaded boats, many operated by human smugglers.

Unfortunately, among the options being mentioned is the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Its prison, which held more than 700 suspected terrorists when it opened a few months after 9/11, now holds fewer than 30, so there’s room for at least some Haitian migrants.

Out of sight out of mind? The United States has a sad history of meddling in Haiti, from sending in troops multiple times to tacitly supporting the dictatorship of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, whose Tonton Macoutes goons practiced a form of government-sanctioned gang violence.

Unlike the migrants now pouring across our southern border from more than 100 different nations and then disappearing to God knows where, Haitian migrants’ location — if they come — would be easier to accurately track.

That’s because the United States is blessed with well-established Haitian-American communities into which migrants could be released pending adjudication of their status. If people do feel compelled to flee Haiti, they will deserve that opportunity.

Robert F. Sanchez, of Tallahassee, is a former member of the Miami Herald Editorial Board. He writes for the Herald’s conservative opinion newsletter, Right to the Point.