A Haitian man has been found guilty of biting three immigration officers who were trying to deport him and of instigating a melee aboard the Haiti-bound airplane they were aboard, prosecutors said.
Jubenson Dominique now faces up to 20 years in prison on each count of biting after a federal jury in San Antonio, Texas, found him guilty of assaulting and resisting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers during the September 2021 incident. In a news release, prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Western District of Texas, said Dominique was among 112 Haitians being loaded onto a plane to return them to Haiti.
Here’s what prosecutors said happened, according to court documents.
- On Sept. 20, 2021, several officers were loading up an airplane operated by Classic Air Charter, a DHS contractor.
- From the middle of the airplane, Dominique and several others “acted violently on the airplane,” instigating a disturbance that involved 12 people.
- When three officers tried to remove Dominique from the plane, he spat and tried to bite them.
“During Dominique’s extraction from the aircraft, he bit the officers, breaking the skin and leaving teeth marks on all three,” the news statement said. “One officer was treated at a local hospital, provided prescriptions for medication and began treatment and testing for possible infections.”
Though prosecutors did not explicitly say it, Dominique was likely among nearly 20,000 Haitians who had arrived in Del Rio, Texas that September. The group camped out under a bridge at the border town while waiting to be processed to seek asylum. However, many were returned to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, though they had been living in Latin America for months and years.
As the U.S. rushed to clear the encampment, thousands of Haitians were deported – to their surprise. A few people said they were made to board planes and, unbeknownst to them, flown to Haiti.
Mirard Joseph, the Del Rio asylum seeker who went viral after he was photographed being chased by horse-riding border patrol officers, is among those who told The Haitian Times authorities misled them.
“Washington – that’s where they said they were taking us,” Joseph said in an audio-recorded interview earlier this year. “Afterward, I heard that they were taking me to Haiti.
“Everybody was crying,” Joseph added.
Dominique could face up to 20 years in prison for each count of inflicting bodily injury and eight years in prison for the third count.
He and his lawyers could not immediately be reached for comment.
