PORT ANTONIO, Jamaica — Emmanuel Geurrier and 30 fellow Haitian earthquake survivors took to the sea last month with pretty much any port in mind.
“In Haiti, people are sleeping in the street and in the roadside, and I don’t want to stay in a country where I have to live like a dog,” he said last week, while in immigration custody in Jamaica. “I took a boat and said, ‘I go anywhere!’ Then I see Jamaica. Maybe I can stay.”
Early Saturday, three days after describing the challenges of living in Haiti after the quake, Geurrier was sent home.
He is one of hundreds of Haitians who have landed on Caribbean shores in the four months since a 7.0-magnitude earthquake rattled the nation, killing an estimated 300,000 and displacing about 1.3 million people.
And while nations such as Jamaica and the Bahamas initially announced compassionate gestures toward their Caribbean neighbor, the welcome mat has been yanked.
Haitian migrants have not swarmed the waters as many had feared, but officials are wary that the upcoming hurricane season will flood Port-au- Prince settlements and push people to take desperate measures.
Geurrier, who had been deported from Jamaica before, landed on the country’s northeast coast on April 10. His group followed another boat of 62 migrants that had already been repatriated, including a handful of escaped prisoners.
But the second group included 11 children and a pregnant woman who gave birth three days after landing, raising issues about whether the mother and her Jamaican-born infant could stay.
The group was held in custody at a Port Antonio Seventh Day Adventist Church, where policemen kept watch and local volunteers helped care for them.
The Jamaican government paid the bill while locals combed the ladies’ hair, brought in food and played with the kids.
One migrant, a tailor, was given a sewing machine to help pass the time while others played cards.
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