Thread: Feds: Surge in Haitians crossing border into Vermont

Feds: Surge in Haitians crossing border into Vermont

By Sam Hemingway, Free Press Staff Writer
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Comments 45

Fernande Theodat-Joseph entered the federal courtroom last Wednesday afternoon looking wan and worried.

Two days earlier, she had been picked up by U.S. Border Patrol agents at 3:15 a.m. as she and another person were walking down a remote dirt road in North Troy in the pouring rain.

She and her companion had quickly admitted the obvious: They had surreptitiously entered the United States from Canada earlier that evening and did not have the proper paperwork to be in the country.

They two also had something else in common: Both were citizens of Haiti.

Familiar story
Theodat-Joseph’s story was familiar to the agents. She had left her homeland and entered the United States illegally in 1998. She was ordered to leave the country in 2000, appealed the order, ordered again to leave and then entered Canada in 2008.

Over the past two and a half months — ever since Haiti was devastated by a monstrous earthquake Jan. 12 — a growing number of Haitian expatriates have been trying to come back into the United States after departing the country just years earlier to avoid deportation.

As of late last week, the number of Haitians caught since the earthquake allegedly trying to enter the country illegally had topped 115, said Mark Henry, operations officer for the U.S. Border Patrol’s Swanton sector.

Of the 115, one was caught in New York and 114 were apprehended in Vermont, Henry said. The Swanton sector covers the border from New Hampshire through Vermont to Ogdensburg, N.Y.

Tristram Coffin, the U.S. Attorney for Vermont, said he would not speculate on why Vermont’s border was such a preferred option for the Haitians.

Betsy Horsman, a deputy U.S. Attorney who works on immigration cases out of Plattsburgh, N.Y., said she suspects the Haitians think they have a better shot of entering Vermont’s border undetected than they would in upstate New York.

“We’re known over here as being very aggressive,â€

[b]For Etienne, 24, this has been a busy, emotional time. She is Haitian, too, but is in the United States legally and is a recent graduate of Middlebury College. She was unemployed and living in Burlington when the phone ran in February and she was asked to serve as an interpreter at the court.

Etienne said she is glad for the work, and glad she is able to do something to help out her fellow Haitians.

“I am able to represent and speak for people who feel voiceless and that’s a privilege,â€