Column Draws Parallels Between Haitian Removals and Historic Refugee Crises

In a column published by the Daily Press and The Virginian-Pilot on July 11, 2026, author and retired broadcaster Chris Dickon of Portsmouth argues that current U.S. moves to expel Haitians echo earlier chapters of American history. Dickon recalls his participation in a 1986 medical mission from Hampton Roads to Haiti, when a full Eastern Airlines jet of doctors, surgeons, nurses and dentists traveled to a hospital in Cap Haitien to treat patients emerging from the dictatorship of François Duvalier, many desperately ill amid the AIDS era. He writes that a president who once sought to remove Haitians from the immigration process now, according to the column, 'expounds a more vulgar form of racism,' supported by government officials and 'sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court,' seeking to remove Haitians including those in legal citizenship processes. Dickon cites an April announcement by HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. of a national autism registry, later withdrawn, and a June Department of Justice memo attributed to Stephen Miller that he says appeared to authorize reinstitutionalization of the mentally ill and developmentally disabled, a matter he describes as still pending. He also recounts the 1940 steamship Quanza, whose roughly 100 Jewish passengers were eventually welcomed as refugees at Norfolk piers with help from Eleanor Roosevelt. Dickon calls it 'an American story; no less relevant now than it was then.'