November 14th, 2011
We walked into the jail, and the first thing I smelled was urine. They threw us in a jail that had no beds, no toilets, no shower, nothing but just concrete. It had a little toilet bowl that didn’t work that had urine and trash and all that stuff up in there.

Longtime Los Angeles resident Wilberle Vereus. Vereus was only 2 years old when his family fled Haiti on a boat following the 1991 coup d’état of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But after a U.S. immigration judge sent him to Haiti this year, Vereus found himself back where he was born, in a country he barely knew.

Since January, the United States has deported more than 250 Haitians knowing that one in two will be jailed without charges in facilities so filthy they pose life-threatening health risks.

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