The Homeland Security Department called it “Operation Able Sentry.” In February 2004, as political unrest in 
Haiti
turned into insurrection, the U.S. Coast Guard, Customs and Border Patrol and other agencies activated a new “mass migration task force” designed to respond quickly to a sudden influx of Haitian refugees. A dozen Coast Guard cutters — up from the normal one to three — were rushed into the Windward Passage between Haiti and Florida, and air surveillance was stepped up.
Almost immediately the first signs of an exodus appeared: about a dozen boats packed with approximately 1,000 fleeing Haitians. “We repatriated those migrants safely in a timely manner,” says Lt. Tony Russell of the 7th Coast Guard District in Miami. “We know from experience that those repatriations are critical to deterring further migration. After that happened, we saw very few [additional] migrants.”
Others say a firm statement by President Bush also discouraged further immigration attempts. “I have made it abundantly clear to the Coast Guard that we will turn back any refugee that attempts to reach our shore, and that message needs to be very clear as well to the Haitian people,” Bush said shortly after Aristide was evacuated. 
In 1991-92 and 1994, more than 66,000 Haitians were picked up at sea, and most were shipped back to Haiti, forcing the Clinton administration to defend its policy of sending back Haitian boat people while welcoming Cubans.
Given the key role Florida’s electoral votes have played in recent presidential campaigns, presidential candidates are loath to alienate the state’s electorate by having large numbers of refugees landing in an election year.
Assistant Secretary of State Noriega told the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in April 2004 that the beginning of the end for Aristide last February was the sudden increase in boat people. “[T]his was of concern to all Haiti’s neighbors, including the United States, for humanitarian and security reasons.” 
Coast Guard statistics show that from 1982 to 2004, Haitians were the largest group of Caribbean boat people heading for South Florida — 106,664 compared to 55,680 from Cuba, the next-biggest number. In 2004, however, about 1,500 more refugees arrived from the Dominican Republic than from Haiti. 
Nevertheless, the United States defines Haitians as a bigger threat than Dominicans or Cubans. In 2003 Attorney General Ashcroft warned that mass migration from Haiti could divert the Coast Guard and Defense Department from counterterrorism duties. 
Moreover, he said, the State Department “has observed an increase in aliens from countries such as Pakistan using Haiti as a staging point for migration to the United States.” 
Ashcroft announced that Haitian asylum applicants would be kept in detention while their cases moved forward. Asked later by the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain the policy, Ashcroft didn’t refer to Pakistanis using Haiti but said the idea was to let Haitian immigrants know they would not be welcome. “The triggering of mass migrations, which can be very disconcerting, can result from the signal that if you come to the United States, you won’t be detained.” 
The Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center (FIAC) has filed a lawsuit seeking release of documents on which the national security claim was based, says Cheryl Little, executive director of FIAC. “We’re reasonably skeptical,” she says. Terrorists using Haiti as a jump-off point would be a danger, she acknowledges. “But does that form a reasonable basis for preventing all Haitian [asylum seekers] from being released from detention?”
However, U.S. fear that a vast Haitian boat migration would overwhelm South Florida’s economy does have some foundation, says Jim Corbett, a retired Webster University philosophy professor and historian who runs a popular e-mail forum on Haiti. “If [Haitians] knew they could get into the U.S., they’d be here in a minute,” he says. Those who claim that the specter of a mass exodus is a myth, he says, “don’t live in Haiti anymore.”
In practice, however, critics say the U.S. fear of terrorism and an onslaught of immigrants is so pervasive it results in detention and/or deportation even of Haitians — like the Rev. Dantica — who arrive by plane and ask for asylum on grounds that their lives are threatened by armed gangs at home.
U.S. officials also say they worry about the dangers posed by Haiti’s role as a transshipment point for illegal drugs. According to the State Department, about 8 percent of the cocaine bound for the U.S. market went through Haiti and/or the Dominican Republic in 2003. 
And the ICG’s di Benedetto says that with Haiti remaining largely lawless since Aristide’s departure, a drop-off in drug trafficking since then is unlikely.
“It is not in our interest for the Caribbean to become unstabilized by refugee flows from Haiti to other islands,” says Stephen Johnson, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “We’ve got good friends [in the Caribbean], and they have a tough row to hoe, because tourism doesn’t pay all the bills. Jamaica has a big crime problem; they don’t need external pressures that are going to impact the economy or law enforcement. That goes for the Bahamas and some of the other smaller islands as well.”
But Gabriel Marcella, a professor of strategy at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., asks whether the problem with boat people is best dealt with by pushing them back to Haiti, or by giving them a reason to stay home. “The frequency of Haitian crises is increasing — from 1994, we went to 2002 then to 2004,” he says. “I’m sure we’re going to get another one in less than five years unless we do something more comprehensive.”
Indeed, says, Bajeux of the Ecumenical Center for Human Rights, “I don’t think it’s a good thing to see millions of Haitians — descendants of slaves brought from Africa — arrive at a level where they don’t have much to eat. I don’t think that’s a good thing, one hour from Miami. It’s not just a question of human compassion, it’s a question of political responsibility.”
