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The Haitian government suspended all flights to Nicaragua on Monday amid rising concerns about a massive migration wave that has led to tens of thousands of Haitians using the Central American country as a springboard to the United States, according to a bulletin sent to the aviation community shared with the Miami Herald.
The Haiti-Nicaragua flights began in August and have grown from seven flights a day to as many as 15 daily charters. There are also charter flights from the neighboring Dominican Republic and the Turks and Caicos carrying Haitians, who pay as much as $4,000 per seat for the trip.
On Monday there had been at least five flights scheduled from Port-au-Prince to Managua’s Augusto Cesar Sandino International Airport. A Miami Herald reporter tallied more than 1,000 passengers waiting in an overflowing parking lot across from the departure terminal of the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Haiti waiting to be called to board flights.
Despite a so-called Notice to Airmen that was issued earlier in the day announcing the flight suspensions, passengers continued to arrive at the airport in Haiti. Some passengers that had already boarded a Sunrise Airways flight for Managua before the bulletin was released were also forced to get off their plane. As news finally spread Monday afternoon about the decision, angry Haitians lashed out at the government, demanding that Prime Minister Ariel Henry reimburse them and tell the public what plans he has to keep them safe from gangs and provide economic opportunities.
“Ariel has put me in a problem here,” said one man who described himself as being in charge of marketing for one of the agencies selling tickets. He had nowhere to escape the crowd’s anger, he said. Among those waiting on Monday was a man who said he paid $3,000 for his airfare. In addition, he said, he needed to travel with an extra $1,000 to make the rest of the journey to Mexico.
“The government has to tell us what plan they have for Haiti,” he said, declining to give his name. “There is no life in Haiti. That’s one of the reasons why everyone is here, everyone has decided to leave. f things were good in Haiti we wouldn’t leave.”
The decision to shut down the flights, operated by travel agencies and charter companies, comes two weeks after Haiti was among 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries invited by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for a migration summit. The summit took place in the city of Palenque in the southern state of Chiapas, a gateway for migrants coming into Mexico that borders Guatemala.
Mexico and Central America have been seeing an unprecedented flow of migrants, according to the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration. Haitians, Africans and Cubans trying to get to the U.S.-Mexico border have been flying directly into Central American cities to bypass the Darién Gap, the treacherous jungle between Panama and Colombia.
In addition to Nicaragua, which has suspended visa requirements for Haitians, Honduras is also seeing a large number of migrants cross its borders. Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega did not participate in the Mexico summit and has been accused of deliberately using his country as pass-through for migrants in order to pressure the U.S. to lift sanctions against his government. Critics charge that the Sandinista government is making money off the trips.
“The Sandinista Front is a business organization. They have transportation, they have lodging, they offer [migrants] a complete package and the commitment is to take them to the border with Honduras,” said Arturo McFields Yescas, Ortega’s former ambassador to the Organization of American States.
In the case of Haiti, many of the migrants use traffickers after landing in Nicaragua to keep going on the route through Central American and Mexico to reach the U.S. border.
At the Mexico migration talks, regional leaders complained about a Biden administration humanitarian-parole program rolled out in January that allows entry into the U.S. to nationals from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua who meet certain criteria.
In a declaration signed by the leaders attending the Mexican summit, the leaders alleged that the program is encouraging irregular migration because it favors the four countries while leaving other nationalities vulnerable to deportation. (https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article281192038.html)
