An Orlando man, who built a life for himself in Florida, is now stuck in Haiti.
Gerson Joseph, 40, was on the deportation flight last week that went from Louisiana to Miami to Haiti.
Joseph had no idea he was being sent out of the country.
“I have no idea what I’m going to do,” he said on a phone call with NBC6 from Haiti. “I barely sleep man, I am not going to lie to you, I barely sleep, I am moving from place to place.”
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Joseph was one of about 50 people sent back to Haiti last week, on the first deportation flight since gangs took over much of the country.
“They dropped us over here with no travel documents, I don’t even have a paper that can identify who I am right now, where I’m at,” said Joseph.
Haiti
On Tuesday, leaders in south Florida’s Haitian American community expressed their outrage over the resumption of the deportation flight program and called on President Biden to stop future flights, noting the dire conditions in Haiti.
Joseph said he was deported because he missed immigration court date notifications, which he says got lost in the mail.
He resolved an Orlando court case, in which he was charged with criminal mischief, then went right into the custody of ICE at Krome Detention Center, then deported.
“While I was at Krome they approved for me and my fiancé to get married and everything, so I could stay in the U.S.,” said Joseph.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says people who have deportation orders will be sent back to their country of origin and said April 19 they are “monitoring the situation in Haiti.”
Family in Florida have started a GoFundMe to help Joseph and other detainees pay for housing in Haiti.
