On April 12, 2022, the Coast Guard intercepted a vessel near the Bahamas carrying sixty seven Haitian migrants. [1] The rickety, U.S.-bound boat was stopped, its migrants were transferred onto a Coast Guard cutter, and ultimately, the entire group was sent back to Haiti. [2] This is common practice for the Migrant Interdiction Program (MIP)– the Coast Guard performs interdictions by intercepting refugee boats before they enter U.S. territorial waters and returning them back to their country of origin where many face imprisonment and torture, with insufficient determination of asylum eligibility. [3] Created in 1981 by President Reagan’s Executive Order 12324, the MIP was established as a “necessary and proper means” of enforcing U.S. immigration laws by preventing undocumented migration. [4]

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