As aid workers dug through the rubble of Haitian cities devastated by Tuesday's massive earthquake, county, state and federal agencies across South Florida were gearing up Thursday to accommodate anticipated waves of refugees from the battered Caribbean nation.
In Palm Beach County, a mass-migration expert with the emergency management division was monitoring relief efforts, and emergency managers were readying for action if immigrants started coming ashore.
"Any time you have an event like this," migration is a possibility, said Chuck Tear, Palm Beach County's emergency operations director. "We're continuing to monitor the situation and will provide support as it's requested."
Tear's office on Thursday also was in contact with the Florida Emergency Operations Center, which partially activated on Wednesday and started cataloging resources to make available to Haiti.
With its miles of coastline, Palm Beach County long has been a landing point for desperate immigrants, many of whom set out for Miami from the Bahamas and are carried north by the Gulf Stream.
In May, at least 10 Haitians drowned after a boat carrying more than 30 migrants capsized in the waters between Bimini and Boynton Beach. Survivors told federal authorities they made their way to the Bahamas from Haiti and paid thousands of dollars to smugglers before risking the treacherous voyage.
As local emergency managers planned for people who might make similar trips, Florida's social services agency was scrambling to make sure it was ready if called upon by the federal authorities.
If the government decides to repatriate an estimated 45,000 American citizens who were living in Port-au-Prince when the magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck, the Department of Children and Families would play a role, said Hiran Ruiz, DCF's director of refugee services.
DCF workers would help newly arrived Americans with food stamps, tax enrollment and signing up for the Medicaid program, Ruiz said.
The agency also would factor in the federal government's plan to deal with a mass-migration. If waves of refugees start landing on Florida's shores, DCF and federal immigration authorities would be responsible for any unattended children, Ruiz said.
"We have a task force working on making sure we are ready to go should that be the case," he said.
Homeland security specialists at the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office on Thursday also were going over a mass-migration plan, which calls for a response from police and fire-rescue agencies from Martin to Monroe counties, said Teri Barbera, sheriff's office spokeswoman.
In the Bahamas, a popular stop-over for Haitians bound for South Florida, the country's National Emergency Management Agency was taking steps Thursday to ready the islands for an influx of immigrants, said Capt. Stephen Russell, head of the agency.
Bahamian emergency officials directed tents, bedding food and manpower to areas where they expect refugees to land, including Great Inagua.
"We are getting ready now," Russell said, "even if the refugees don't come for two or three weeks."
In a move mirroring Operation Pedro Pan in the 1960s, Catholic Charities and other South Florida immigrant rights organizations are planning an ambitious effort to airlift possibly thousands of Haitian children left orphaned in the aftermath of Tuesday's horrific earthquake.
"We will use the model we used 40 years ago with Pedro Pan to bring these orphans to the United States to give them a lifeline, a bright and hopeful future," Catholic Charities Legal Services executive director Randolph McGrorty said at a news conference in the offices of Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart.
"Given the enormity of what happened in Haiti, a priority is to bring these orphaned children to the United States," he said.
Archdiocese of Miami officials and other local organizations have already identified a temporary shelter in Broward County to house the children, McGrorty said.
He also said they had been in contact with the Obama administration to assist in bringing the children from Haiti with humanitarian visas. Operation Pedro Pan was launched on Dec. 26, 1960, as part of a successful clandestine effort to spirit children out of Fidel Castro's new Cuba as communist indoctrination was spreading into Catholic and private schools.
By the time it ended 22 months later, the unique exodus of children — ages 5 to 17 — had brought 14,048 unaccompanied Cuban minors to America, with the secret help of the U.S. government, which funded the effort and supplied the visa waivers, and the Catholic church, which promised to care for the children.
The late Monsignor Bryan O. Walsh, a Miami priest, was considered the father of the effort.
As the children filtered into Miami and their numbers swelled, many went to live with relatives and family friends, but others were sent to Miami-Dade group homes and camps called Florida City, Kendall and Matecumbe.
They were then relocated across the country to archdioceses in places like Nebraska, Washington and Indiana. There, they went to live in orphanages, foster homes and schools until their parents could find a way out of Cuba. Sometimes the separation was brief; sometimes it lasted years.
"We will use the model we used 40 years ago with Pedro Pan to bring these orphans to the United States to give them a lifeline, a bright and hopeful future," Catholic Charities Legal Services executive director Randolph McGrorty said at a news conference in the offices of Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart.
Why in the name of all that is good can't these 'people' ship their OWN asses THERE to 'give them a lifelikne, a bright and hopeful future' ???????
Freaking catlickers...I'm beginning to believe the ONLY one I respect in the WHOLE WORLD is Martin.