Thread: FL-Immigration advocates: Release parents of dead infant

Posted on Tuesday, 08.11.09
Immigration advocates: Release parents of dead infant

Nearly three months after a boat overloaded with Haitian migrants capsized off South Florida's coast, the body of the youngest drowning victim lies unclaimed in a morgue.

Advocates in Miami's Little Haiti pressed federal authorities Tuesday to release the 8-month-old girl's parents so they can bury the child they lost in the fast-flowing Gulf Stream current and to fight the government's efforts to deport them back to Haiti.

The body of Luana Augustin was among nine recovered from the ocean. The infant remains at the Palm Beach County medical examiner's office, along with the bodies of three other women who died in the accident and have not been identified.

•Advocates: Release 2 Haitians to bury daughter
Advocates: Release 2 Haitians to bury daughter
Nearly three months after a boat overloaded with Haitian migrants capsized off South Florida's coast, the body of the youngest drowning victim lies unclaimed in a morgue.

Advocates in Miami's Little Haiti pressed federal authorities Tuesday to release the 8-month-old girl's parents so they can bury the child they lost in the fast-flowing Gulf Stream current and to fight the government's efforts to deport them back to Haiti.

The body of Luana Augustin was among nine recovered from the ocean. The infant remains at the Palm Beach County medical examiner's office, along with the bodies of three other women who died in the accident and have not been identified.

•Coast Guard IDs survivors of sunken migrant boat
Coast Guard IDs survivors of sunken migrant boat
The U.S. Coast Guard on Friday released the names of 16 people rescued from the boat that sank early Wednesday off the Palm Beach County coast, bringing joy and relief to their families who had waited two tension-filled days to learn the fate of their loved ones.

Meanwhile, federal immigration authorities continued their criminal probe to determine who should be held responsible for the deaths of at least nine other people whose bodies were recovered following a search and rescue effort of what they suspect was a doomed smuggling operation.

The names of the dead have not been disclosed.

•9 migrants dead as boat capsizes
9 migrants dead as boat capsizes
At least nine people -- all believed to be Haitian migrants -- were reported dead on Wednesday after the U.S. Coast Guard spent hours scouring the waters off Boynton Beach in search of survivors from a suspected smuggling operation gone wrong.

Sixteen known survivors were adrift in the Atlantic Ocean for more than 10 hours before they were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard.

The migrants were part of an apparent smuggling operation that set off from Bimini in the Bahamas in a vessel carrying 30 people, including children and one pregnant woman.
BY TRENTON DANIEL
tdaniel@MiamiHerald.com
Immigration advocates on Tuesday pressed for the immediate release of the parents who lost their baby girl when their migrant boat capsized off the coast of Palm Beach County in May.

The reason: To bury their 8-month-old, Luana Augustin.

``They should be released to deal with the death of their little girl,'' Marleine Bastien, executive director of the Haitian Women of Miami, said at a news conference in Little Haiti. ``They've had nightmares every night.''

A spokeswoman from U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement said the agency uses prosecutorial discretion to release people on humanitarian grounds, but ICE in this case no longer has the parents in its custody. The parents are in the US Marshals Service's custody, she said.

Any additional information would need to come from the U.S. attorney's office, as this is a pending criminal matter, the spokeswoman said.

The U.S. attorney's office declined to comment, citing a pending criminal matter.

Luana was among at least nine migrants who died around May 13 when their boat -- carrying more than two dozen passengers -- overturned and sank off Boynton Beach. Sixteen survivors were pulled from the water.

Federal authorities later charged the boat's captain, Jimmy Metellus, and Jean Monique Nelson with alien smuggling resulting in death.Metellus told investigators he was hired by four men in the Bahamas and agreed to make the trip for free to escape hardships in Haiti.

The smugglers were allegedly paid thousands of dollars for the journey, which was supposed to go from Nassau to Bimini and then to Miami.

If convicted, the two men face up to life in prison, though prosecutors could choose to seek the death penalty.

Luana's parents, Chandeline Leonard and Lucsene Augustin, are being held at a jail in West Palm Beach, attorneys say. Luana's body, they note, is in the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's office, awaiting burial.

At the news conference Tuesday morning, Luana's family members conveyed the general anxiety they feel over not being able to achieve closure with a proper burial. Albert Noel, a cousin of Leonard, said he visited her two weeks ago.

``She doesn't eat -- she's so skinny,'' Noel, 59, of North Miami, said as he held up his pinkie.

In addition to calling for the parents' release, immigration advocates also renewed their call for some 30,000 Haitians in the United States to receive temporary protected status, or TPS. The status would allow undocumented Haitians to remain in the countrytemporarily with a work permit. The Obama administration is reviewing the possibility of granting TPS to Haitians, though the president said Monday that an immigration overhaul would have to wait until next year.

``The 30,000 Haitians can't wait for TPS,'' Bastien said.

Former President Bill Clinton, the United Nations' special envoy to Haiti, brought up the TPS issue Sunday at a Haitian diaspora conference in Sunny Isles Beach. He urged his audience to keep the pressure on but do so respectfully.


http://www.miamiherald.com/news/broward ... 81583.html

Send them to Mexico because they seem to have a deminishing population.