Turks and Caicos Islands issues warning against Haitians trying to go there

The Turks and Caicos Islands warned Thursday that it will not stop going after undocumented Haitian migrants in its territory and will continue to target employers who harbor, hire and employ them.

“We don’t stop to catch the illegals that are presently here in the Turks and Caicos Islands ... and that won’t stop until the Turks and Caicos Islands are really rid of it,” Minister of Immigration Arlington Musgrove said during a press conference in Providenciales.

Musgrove said the British dependent territory is seeing a “significant surge” in undocumented Haitians trying to enter the islands, where many of the 40,000 residents are of Haitian descent. There is also a significant population of Haitians who are employed legally with work permits and who perform low-wage jobs that natives will not do.

“We are a small country and this increasing activity, if left unchecked, undoubtedly will continue to pressure our system and our resources,” he said.

The increase in migration from Haiti has some natives demanding that the territory cut off relations with Haiti, which Musgrove said is unrealistic given that the two nations need the diplomatic ties in order to continue repatriation efforts.

“Should we break these ties, we will be forced to keep all migrants that we caught on the boats; we will be forced to keep them here in the TCI; that means every boat, every interception, all 2,355 migrants, repatriated for 2022 and 2023 alone would remain here,” he said.

Musgrove said those migrants represent a 52% increase over the previous year, and also represent 5% of the country’s population.

“Since Christmas alone, we have stopped 851 migrants from entering and disappearing into Turks and Caicos Islands communities,” he said. “Those migrants were quickly processed, fingerprinted and repatriated. And if they come back, we will know them because their fingerprints will tell us.”

Late last year, United Nations Human Rights High Commissioner Volker Türk, who is wrapping up a two-day visit to Haiti, asked countries in the region to halt deportations to Haiti, citing the country’s ongoing human rights and humanitarian crisis. Despite the plea, the Turks and Caicos, along with the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic and the United States, continue to repatriate Haitians.

On Thursday, Türk once again made the plea while visiting the city of Ouanaminthe in northeast Haiti close to the Dominican border, where he heard first hand accounts of Haitian migrants who had been deported.

“And my strong appeal that I made last year and I reiterate it now here, is to ensure that no deportations take place given the extremely dire situation of the country,” he said. “It’s so important that we need to respect human rights law and human international refugee law in these circumstances.”

In touting beefed up enforcement, Turks and Caicos officials said they are working closely with U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, which has agents embedded alongside local immigration and customs agents to check out every boat ferrying undocumented migrants. Asked how much drugs and illegal arms the island-chain discovered in boats coming from Haiti last year during searches, authorities said none.

The admission came as a surprise, considering that last month the government listed an upsurge in violent crime in the island-chain as one of the reasons it had decided to issue a six-month moratorium on all visas for Haitian nationals as of Jan. 11.

Musgrove said during the press conference, reiterating the Haitian visa ban “following the deteriorating states in Haiti and a number of triggers, such as the increased number of irregular migrants attempting to enter Turks and Caicos Islands, upsurge in violent crimes in Haiti, upsurge in violent crimes in TCI and number of persons repatriated and deported to Haiti recently.”