MIAMI — Dozens of Haitians expelled from the United States arrived back in Haiti on Thursday in the Department of Homeland Security’s first deportation flight since an ongoing gang insurgency forced the Biden administration to halt a flight with deportees and order the evacuation of Americans.

Haiti’s Office of National Migration said it was informed by U.S. authorities to expect the arrival of 74 Haitians aboard an Immigration and Customs Enforcement flight in Cap-Haïtien shortly before noon on Thursday. In the end, 52 arrived aboard the plane, which left Alexandria, Louisiana, and made a stop in Miami before landing in the northern Haiti city.

“The resumption of deportation flights to Haiti is beyond belief. At least beliefs that embrace compassion and humanity,” said Tom Cartwright, an independent volunteer analyst who tracks ICE deportation flights and was the first to spot the Haiti-bound U.S. government charter.

Randolph McGrorty, executive director of Catholic Legal Services in Miami, was surprised as well.

“It is simply cruel to deport individuals to Haiti at this time,” he said. “I am very concerned that we are are not following the law and our international obligations by adequately assessing asylum concerns and basic humanitarian principles.”

Among those deported was Gerson Joseph, a Florida resident for more than 20 years who is engaged to be married and has a daughter who is a U.S. citizen. Joseph, who turns 40 next week, called his lawyer, Philip Issa, on Wednesday informing him that an officer at the Krome Detention Center in southwest Miami-Dade, where he had been detained since November, informed him he would be deported in the morning.

“He should not have been considered what they call an enforcement priority,” said Issa, an attorney with Americans for Immigrant Justice in Miami.

Joseph, who is originally from Haiti’s gang-controlled Artibonite Valley, was first ordered deported in 2005 after he missed his immigration hearing. Last year, after getting arrested for petty theft and burglary, he found himself back in the crosshairs of the Department of Justice, which denied him the opportunity to reopen his immigration case and contest his deportation order, Issa said.

“I want to say that I’m shocked but I’m not. I’m upset more than anything,” Issa said. “Based on what I was reading about Haiti, I couldn’t imagine they could pull this flight off. I didn’t believe it until it actually happened. This administration has not given us any reason to think that it is dealing compassionately with immigrants and so I am upset. I’m disappointed because they are sending him back to a war zone. It’s catastrophic.”

There were 40 men and 12 women aboard the flight. Betty Noel, who is from La Gonâve, an island west-northwest of Port-au-Prince, said she fled Haiti seven months ago after being victimized. After sometime in Mexico, she illegally crossed the border into the United States.

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