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[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 70 (Monday, May 1, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E893-E894]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

[[Page E893]]

     UNITED STATES SPONSORS WAIT FOR UNACCOMPANIED HAITIAN CHILDREN

                                 ______

                          HON. CARRIE P. MEEK

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                           Monday, May 1, 1995
  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, few things are as traumatic for a 
child as being abandoned. However, for the past 9 months, 249 
unaccompanied Haitian children have been detained in a hot, dusty 
refugee camp at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 
The plight of these children demands the attention of every American.
  I want to share with my colleagues an article that appeared in this 
morning's New York Times which describes the plight of these 
unfortunate, minor children, who have waited for months--and possibly 
will have to wait several more months--while the United Nations High 
Commissioner on Refugees tries to find homes for them in Haiti.
  This article details the harsh, impermanent life that these children 
face in the camp, despite the best efforts of dedicated U.S. military 
personnel to help make the best of a bad situation. I urge all my 
colleagues to read this article.
  The United States would not tolerate such treatment for our children. 
In fact, the United States does not treat Cuban children at Guantanamo 
in this manner. The time has come for the United States to end this 
kind of treatment to Haitian children at Guantanamo, too.
  At Guantanamo, these children are alone, vulnerable and depressed. 
However, many of these children have relatives living in the United 
States who are ready and willing to care for them. Religious and 
community groups in Miami have volunteered to provide whatever 
resources are necessary to insure that no child would become a public 
charge and that each would be fully supported.
  Mr. Speaker, children belong in homes, not camps. The time has come 
to close this camp and insure these children a decent place in which to 
live where they are wanted, loved, nutured and properly cared for. The 
Justice Department needs to change its policies to make this possible.
                 [From the New York Times, May 1, 1995]

          Many Haitian Children View Camp's Limbo as Permanent

                          (By Mireya Navarro)

       Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.--In a neat corner of a tent at the 
     United States Naval Base here, an assortment of personal 
     items had been tightly arranged on two cardboard boxes that 
     served as a night stand: lotion to protect against the 
     relentless Caribbean sun, detergent to hand-wash laundry, and 
     M&M's and Tootsie Rolls.
       The occupant who calls that corner home is a 13-year-old 
     boy, and what he lacked was shoes. He is among 249 Haitian 
     children who have been held in one of 14 refugee camps here 
     since last summer while American officials decide, case by 
     case, whether to allow them into the United States or send 
     them back to Haiti. As the weeks drag on, shoes and clothes 
     donated by relief organizations are sometimes in short 
     supply.
       So, the boy said, he has skipped school for five days while 
     he goes barefoot. He was too embarrassed to do otherwise.
       ``He doesn't want to go to school without shoes; it's 
     understandable,'' said Capt. Michael Dvoracek, the Army 
     officer who oversees the Haitian children's camp, operated by 
     a joint military task force. ``We'd love to get more shoes 
     and clothes. They are growing kids, and it doesn't take long 
     for them to go through a pair of shoes when they do get 
     them.''
       At a portable Air Force hospital, another ``unaccompanied 
     minor'' from Haiti, a teen-ager named Marie-Carole Celestin, 
     awaited a decision on her future, with a badly injured right 
     hip. She was summoned to the hospital the other day with all 
     her belongings because her doctors had recommended that she 
     be sent to the United States for surgery that could not be 
     performed here.
       But for the third time the Justice Department said no. Her 
     pediatrician, Lieut. Col. Nadege Maletz, said that because 
     Marie-Carole's hip injury had existed before she left Haiti 
     and was not considered acute, she
      had not been deemed eligible for treatment in the United 
     States. But Colonel Maletz said she would make another 
     appeal. In the meantime, she said, the girl's discomfort 
     has kept her from sleeping at night, and so she will be 
     sent back to the camp with painkillers.
       The children, most from 14 to 17 years old but some as 
     young as 2 months, are among the last 480 of 21,000 Haitians 
     who were settled in the refugee camps here after they fled 
     political violence in their homeland last year.
       Most of the adults were repatriated beginning last 
     November, shortly after the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was 
     restored to the presidency. But scores of children remain 
     here while the United Nations High Commission on Refugees and 
     other organizations trace relatives to make certain that the 
     young Haitians have a proper home when they either return to 
     their country or, for very few, make it to the United States.
       The base provides the children clothing, food and 
     schooling. But the tent city where they live is dusty, the 
     supplies of donated items like shoes are haphazard, medical 
     care is limited, and spirits are low.
       As with most of the Haitian children here--who are believed 
     to have close relatives remaining in Haiti, where the 
     political situation is still somewhat unsettled--the barefoot 
     13-year-boy was allowed to speak to a reporter on the 
     condition that his name not be published. ``I'm alone here,'' 
     he said. ``I don't feel good here. It's been nine months.''
       The United States houses Haitian and Cuban refugees 
     separately here--there are 2 camps for Haitians, 12 for 
     Cubans--and also, say advocates for the Haitian children, 
     treats them unequally. While a revision in American policy 
     has reopened the door to entry to the United States fairly 
     wide for Cuban children, particularly
      those who are unaccompanied by their parents here, that door 
     remains almost entirely closed to young Haitians.
       Alleging discrimination, lawyers for the Haitian Refugee 
     Center in Miami have filed a petition asking the United 
     States Supreme Court to order that the Haitian children be 
     admitted.
       The lawyers note that the Clinton Administration is 
     reviewing the cases even of Cuban children who are in the 
     care of their parents here, but for whom a long stay at 
     Guantanamo would constitute ``an extraordinary hardship.'' 
     This, they argue, amounts to saying that refugee camps that 
     are hard on Cuban children are adequate for Haitian children.
       American officials explain the differences in treatment by 
     saying that Haitians as a whole can now return home to a 
     democracy, an option the Cubans do not have. And better to 
     keep the Haitian children here for the time being, they say, 
     than to send them to an unknown fate before their relatives 
     can be found back in their country.
       ``I don't know how we can run a more humane policy,'' said 
     Brig. Gen. John J. Allen, the Air Force officer who commands 
     the camps.
       How did Haitian youths wind up alone here? Why had they set 
     out on their dangerous voyage alone? In some cases, advocates 
     say, because their parents had been killed in Haiti, in 
     others because they represented a family's hope of riches in 
     America.
       Whatever the case, tracing relatives has been hampered not 
     only because of all the logistical and communications 
     problems entailed in reaching remote areas of the children's 
     little homeland but also because the children often provide 
     inaccurate or insufficient information about their families--
     sometimes intentionally, in an effort to avoid being sent 
     back.
       Since November, when the tracing began, only about 70 of 
     the youths have been placed in Haiti--or ``aged out'' as they 
     turn 18, at which point most are repatriated. Even the most 
     optimistic estimates foresee most of them remaining here 
     through the summer.
       Very few of the Haitian children--23 so far--have been 
     allowed into the United States. These are children who had 
     parents there or had medical problems deemed life-
     threatening.
       At the portable hospital, Colonel Maletz said this policy 
     had meant, for instance, that a diabetic girl and an H.I.V.-
     infected boy with a lung ailment had been allowed to 
     immigrate, while four children who need surgery for cataracts 
     and other eye problems had not, even in cases that posed a 
     risk of vision loss.
       As the camps for Haitians are phased out and the camps for 
     Cubans become more nearly permanent, the Cubans are afforded 
     improvements that the Haitians lack.
       An increasing number of Cubans are sheltered now in 
     sturdier ``strong-back'' tents with wooden floors and window 
     screens, for instance. There are also plans to allow them 
     visits from relatives in the United States. Neither step is 
     being considered for the Haitian children, simply because 
     they are not expected to be here beyond a few more months.
       Still, recent additions to Camp 9, a former airfield where 
     the children live in 24 tents with 20 Haitian adults known as 
     ``house parents,'' include a playground for small children, a 
     basketball hoop and an open area for soccer and volleyball. A 
     suspended cargo parachute provides shade for a gathering 
     place, as does a huge tree where a dozen boys sat on picnic 
     tables the other day, hanging out.
       The Haitian youths are expected to rise at 6 A.M. and go to 
     bed at 10 P.M. Their responsibilities consist of attending 
     school, doing their own laundry, keeping the camp clean and 
     helping with chores like serving food.
       Teen-agers, eight of whom have become pregnant since 
     arriving at the camp, receive contraceptives. They also have 
     adult education classes. (A sign on a bulletin board 
     summoned, in Creole: ``Women Only! To discuss quality of life 
     in camp. Types of activities you want. Types of supplies you 
     need. What's important to you.'')
       On one recent day, seven teenagers were on ``administrative 
     segregation'' in another camp, most of
      them for fights during which they ``took a swing'' at an 
     intervening soldier or camp worker, Captain Dvoracek said. 
     But he minimized any such problems, saying that ``the vast 
     majority are great kids.''
       Around the camp, the children's main complaint is 
     uncertainty of the future. Mental health workers here say 
     that most of the 
     [[Page E894]] children are handling their stay well but that 
     many suffer from adjustment disorders like depression.
       When the 13-year-old barefoot boy heard that children in 
     the neighboring camps for Cubans were being flown to the 
     United States, he told his keepers that his mother was Cuban. 
     Switching from Haitian Creole to fluent Spanish, he said his 
     father, a Haitian, had not liked Cuba and so had taken him to 
     Haiti when he was 8, leaving his mother behind.
       He said he did not want to go to Cuba, because Cuban 
     refugees had already warned him that things were bad there. 
     And he said he did not want to go back to Haiti, where, he 
     said, he saw his father shot to death by ``guards'' in 1994 
     ``because they thought he worked with Aristide.'' His hope, 
     he said, is an uncle in Florida whom he has tried to call but 
     whose telephone has been disconnected.
       Sitting on a cot in his neat corner in the tent, bent over 
     with elbows on his thighs, he spoke in an irritated tone. He 
     said he passed the time sleeping, attending school and 
     thinking about ``my father, who died.'' If he makes it to the 
     United States, he said, he wants to learn English and study 
     to be a doctor and a journalist.
       He said he was still waiting for a response to his 
     contention that he is half Cuban.
       ``We want to leave, too,'' he said.
       

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