Informant38

asylum

Edwidge Danticat's uncle dies in the custody of Homeland Security, in Miami.

I just found out that Edwidge Danticat's uncle [Joseph Dantica] who raised her while her parents were in the US, died last week while in the custody of Homeland Security. He was 81 years old, he had a valid visa to the US, he was a church pastor, and he was forced to flee Haiti after the UN used his church to stage an 'operation,' killing several civilians in the process.

Hannah Tinti
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Haitian-Americans watched in awe this week as a group of 44 Cuban entertainers applied for political asylum in Las Vegas, unmolested by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The treatment of the Cubans could not have contrasted more sharply with the experience of Joseph Dantica, an 81-year-old Haitian Baptist minister who recently applied for asylum in Miami.

St. Petersburg Times
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...as he tried to enter the country, he was taken to Miami's Krome Detention Facility (not a pretty place, I tell you what), and his medication was confiscated.

Although he apparently had a visa and family ready to receive him, Dantica was held pending an immigration hearing. When he "began vomiting and passed out, . . . He was taken to a hospital where family members were not permitted to see him and died the next day."

excerpted from Maud Newton

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We Are Ugly, But We Are Here
article by Edwidge Danticat