Haitian deportees start over in country they don’t recognize

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Hundreds of Haitians are scrambling to find jobs, food and housing after being deported from the U.S. to a country that is now more violent, impoverished and politically unstable than when they left almost a decade ago.

The only certainty in their new lives is a hot plate of rice and meat served at the airport before the deportees, some of them with young children, venture into the streets of Port-au-Prince and beyond as they seek shelter or await help from relatives.

Some have neither.

Claile Bazile, 35, said she doesn’t know where she and her 2-year-old son will stay once they leave the hotel room that officials temporarily set aside for some deportees. The 7.2-magnitude earthquake that struck southern Haiti last month and killed more than 2,200 people also destroyed her family’s home.

“They’re out on the street,” she said of her mother, five sisters and brother.

Like thousands of other Haitians, Bazile said she left Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake because she couldn’t find a job and didn't want to be a burden to her family. Many of them traveled to Chile, where they found work that dried up amid the pandemic, prompting them to travel to Mexico in hopes of settling in the U.S.

Among them was Joseph Derilus, 33, who worked cleaning the beach for a seaside hotel near Port-au-Prince before concerns over his financial situation and worsening violence led him to find a construction job in Chile, where he lived for four years before heading to the U.S.-Mexico border. Now, he’s back in Haiti with his wife and a son who’s nearly 2 years old.

“I don’t have money. Everything is very complicated,” he said. “There’s no security in Haiti. There’s nothing.”

Haiti has long grappled with political unrest, but its problems have only worsened...