Stateless man avoids deportation to Haiti
Arelis R. Hernández, The Washington Post
Jan. 20, 2021
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For the second time in his stateless life, Paul Pierrilus faced the possibility this week of being deported to a country that he has never known, that he has never lived in and that has never recognized him.
The 40-year-old New York man was minutes away from boarding one of the last deportation flights of the Trump administration before a relentless international effort by his family, his attorney and a fortuitous connection to a freshman U.S. congressman helped him evade removal.
Immigration attorneys and advocates say chartered deportation flights continued uninterrupted until the last hours of Donald Trump s presidency, sending dozens of immigrants like Pierrilus to nations they scarcely know or fled decades earlier.
Rockland/Westchester Journal News
Eight ICE officers surrounded Paul Pierrilus as he crossed the tarmac at Alexandria International Airport in Louisiana on Tuesday, heading to a Haiti-bound plane.
Shackled at the wrists, ankles and waist, the Spring Valley resident continued to insist that he wasn’t a Haitian national and shouldn’t be sent to a country where he had never been.
Pierrilus was to be the last to board one of the final, rushed deportation flights in the dwindling days of the Trump administration.
Then, his lawyer Katrina Bleckley recounted this week, another ICE officer came over and said Pierrilus wouldn t be boarding the flight and would instead be returned to New York.