Haiti: Arrival of the first deportees under the Trump administration

The first group of Haitian migrants deported from the United States arrived back in the Caribbean nation on Tuesday.

The group arrived by plane at the Cap-Haitien airport on the north coast of Haiti, the only airport still open for traffic in the country.

Mario Montès said he had been in the U.S. for almost a year.

He said he worked in Alaska but was detained by Immigration and Custom Enforcement officials in Miami.

“I was on the way to work and they (immigration officers) asked if I could come to see them because there is a new president and there were some papers we had to apply for again,” he said.

“I went to their office. I saw the handcuffs and they just told me they were going to send me to my country,” he added

The deportations are part of a series of executive orders signed by U.S. President Donald Trump following his return to the White House last month.

In the first week of his second term, the Department of Homeland Security reported deporting some 7,300 people of various nationalities.

Haiti has been struggling to fight surging gang violence across the capital Port-au-Prince and beyond, with gunmen in recent days killing at least 40 people in an upscale community.

More than 5,600 people were reported killed last year across Haiti and more than 2,200 others were injured.

Gang violence has left more than one million people homeless in recent years, according to the U.N.