Etienne Ilienses checks her family's papers for a flight to Chile, at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022. Ilienses said she was sent back to Haiti from Texas on Dec. 14 and talked to the AP before flying to Santiago with her three children on a Jan. 30 charter flight on SKY. “To get to the USA, I braved hell,” she said. Still, she did not dismiss doing it again “because Haiti offers nothing to its children. We are forced to suffer humiliations, affronts everywhere." (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
A months-long investigation conducted by the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley, Berkeley Journalism's Investigative Reporting Program, and The Associated Press details how Latin American airlines are profiting from Haitians expelled from the US and immigrating back through Latin America to escape the threat of violence in Haiti. Our investigation shows how Haitians have become a lucrative market not only for the illegal, underground enterprises of migrant smugglers—but for legal, registered businesses such as travel agencies and low-budget airlines.