Churches Take Lead in Resettling Released HIV-Infected Haitians : Refugees: After judge’s ruling, two religious groups move swiftly to implement resettlement of refugees detained at Guantanamo Navy base in Cuba since 1992.

The National Council of Churches and the U.S. Catholic Conference are taking the lead in resettling the 138 HIV-infected Haitians being released from the Guantanamo Navy base in Cuba.

The Haitian refugees have been held at Guantanamo since early in 1992, living in what has been reported as deplorable conditions.

The two religious organizations have been pressing the government to release the HIV-infected refugees and allow church groups to resettle them.

On June 8, U.S. District Judge Sterling Johnson ruled that the Haitians were being held illegally, and the two church groups moved swiftly to implement the resettlement.

“We are pleased that through the ministry of Church World Service we are able to provide for those in the greatest need,” said the Rev. Joan Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches. “We are responding to the gospel’s mandate to care for the sick and the dying.”

Church World Service, the relief and development arm of the National Council of Churches, will resettle between 30 and 40 of the HIV-infected refugees, primarily in Florida and New York. Its Immigration and Refugee Program has long been involved in resettling Cubans and Haitians under the U.S. government’s resettlement program, as has the U.S. Catholic Conference’s Migration and Refugee Services agency.

“Church World Service is very concerned about the quality of the resettlement,” said Lani Havens, executive director of the agency.

“This is not simply a mechanical process of transferring people to their families,” she said. “We want to be able to facilitate the support of those families as they welcome their relatives under some very trying circumstances.

“To welcome loved ones who are ill or will become ill requires a great deal of compassion from those families,” she said.

The first flight of refugees--those with relatives in Florida--left Guantanamo Monday.

The remainder were expected to leave on eight different flights over the next 10 days. The refugees were among about 40,000 Haitians who fled the nation after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s ouster by a military/upper-class coup in September, 1991.

Although the refugees tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, they could not be legally returned to Haiti because U.S. officials had determined they qualified for political asylum.

Instead, the Bush Administration detained them at Guantanamo in prisonlike conditions.

Johnson said the government’s continuing detention “deviates from established parole policy and is illegally based upon a statute which is selectively enforced against Haitian nationals.”

“The government’s continuing imprisonment . . . serves no purpose but to punish them for being sick,” the judge said.

Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) has called on President Clinton to appeal Johnson’s ruling.

“It is my belief that this action threatens Florida with a financial disaster,” Mica said. “This action could be a medical disaster for this country.”

But Jane Lowicki, a spokeswoman for Church World Service, said that “for people concerned about health care costs for these refugees, I would emphasize that refugees and immigrants give much more back to this country as a whole than they ever take.”

Each of the refugees will be assigned a caseworker, who will inform them of their legal status and of benefits and health care.

Under Johnson’s ruling, the refugees have been paroled into the United States for one year, during which time they can seek full political asylum.