Rally organizer slams Biden team’s treatment of Haitian refugees

An organizer of a pro-immigration protest downtown Tuesday called the Biden administration’s response to Haitian refugees at the southern border racist and inhumane.

The demonstration, made up of a few dozen people, follows the latest crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border and comes ahead of a national week of action for the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.

Nana Gyamfi, executive director of the activist organization, said she wants people to know there is a moral imperative to protect Black migrants.

“We are the most vulnerable people at that border, and they need to let us in,” she told a group of about 40 people in front of the Federal Justice Tower, 501 Las Vegas Blvd. South. The building houses the local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office and U.S. attorney’s office.

The group shouted pro-immigrant and anti-police chants and criticized the Biden administration.

Last month, thousands of people, most of them Haitian, converged on the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas to seek asylum.

On Sept. 24, Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, told reporters that 2,000 people had been sent back to Haiti and that more than 12,000 others would have their cases heard by an immigration judge to determine whether they could stay in the United States.

Gyamfi called the administration’s response racist, cruel, inhumane and calloused.

“We should not be deporting people from this country, period,” she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “There’s enough space in this country for everyone.”

The government’s response at the border has been criticized, and President Joe Biden condemned how Border Patrol agents on horseback confronted Haitian migrants. “It sends the wrong message around the world,” Biden said last month. “It’s simply not who we are.”

Mayorkas told reporters he has asked the Office of Inspector General for an investigation into law enforcement’s actions.

This week, State Department legal adviser Harold Koh resigned, calling the administration’s response to deportations “flawed policy.” His resignation comes two weeks after the special envoy for Haiti resigned over the expulsions

Gyamfi said humanitarian parole, a process for allowing migrants into the country temporarily because of an emergency, should be granted at the border. And Congress, she said, should develop pathways to permanent protection for migrants.

But the Nevada Republican Party disagreed with Gyamfi.

“As Nevada jobs are scarce, its water is drying up, and the economy is in shambles, it it egregious to argue we have the resources for the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants crossing the border monthly,” Executive Director Jessica Hanson said. “President Biden’s out-of-control border crisis is a humanitarian tragedy because of this administration’s open-border policies and it is a shame Nevada Democrats in Washington, D.C., are doing absolutely nothing to protect our communities.”

Most attendees on Tuesday appeared to be in Las Vegas attending the National Immigrant Integration Conference, but a few local activists also addressed the group.

“I want to let you know that Las Vegas is happy to have you here, and we absolutely stand in solidarity as we protect Black migrants,” said Ender Austin III of Faith in Action Nevada.

Contact Blake Apgar at bapgar@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5298. Follow @blakeapgar on Twitter. The Associated Press and Review-Journal staff writer Gary Martin in Washington contributed to this report.