Charter business thrives as US-expelled Haitians flee Haiti

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) (Odelyn Joseph, Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

SANTIAGO, Chile – Thousands of Haitians in recent months have boarded charter flights to South America, according to flight tracking information and independent verification by The Associated Press in collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley.

The AP and Berkeley partnered to look at the infrastructure of Haitian migration to Latin America that has reached the U.S.-Mexico border at record levels amid worsening conditions in Haiti.

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The reporting found a thriving, little-known shadow industry that is exploiting the U.S. government’s decision to send people back to a country besieged by violence.

Haitians are 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.