U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder joins CARICOM Meeting in Haiti

March 11, 2013 5:08 PM

Haiti, with its president Michel Martelly, continues its role as the head of Caricom by hosting the U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, at a conference for the region's leaders. It's been a year of firsts for Haiti where the Caribbean Community is concerned; first with Martelly assuming the mantle of its chair and now with the country hosting its first Caricom event. It was, therefore, a considerable boon for the attorney general to attend this milestone.

In his address, aimed at discussing the issue of crime and briefing the region about the impending deportation of criminals born in the Caricom member states who are currently imprisoned in the U.S., Eric Holder touched on the region's need to subdue drug and weapons trafficking. He also spoke on the need to increase the capacity of security and law enforcement in member countries to better enable them to handle their deported citizens, as well as the need for the U.S. to give as much notice as possible to a country with impending deportees.

Since 1996, when the U.S. Congress gave the mandate that all non-citizens who have been sentenced to a year or more in prison must be deported from the U.S. upon their release, deportees, numbering into the hundreds of thousands, have been returned to the shores of home countries they barely remember.

Before the 2010 earthquake, it is reported some 30,000 Haitians had been ordered to leave the U.S. A moratorium was granted for 700 scheduled at the time to be deported but that suspension has since expired.

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U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder joins CARICOM Meeting in Haiti

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