[1] They were fleeing by boat after Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the democratically elected president of Haiti, was overthrown and the military government was persecuting his followers.

[5] The HIV+ refugees were quarantined in a section of the military base known as Camp Bulkeley and faced human rights violations.

[7] Those who were repatriated were handed over to Haitian officials who made a file of them including photos and fingerprints labeling them to be Aristide supporters which was a dangerous title to have at the time.

[3] Guantanamo was chosen to be a refugee camp because it was in between the US and Haiti and also primarily existed outside the jurisdiction of US constitutional law.

As became the standard, Haitian refugees fleeing the dictatorship were met with "arrest, jail, the denial of asylum, and swift expulsion."

Carter created a new immigration category called "entrants" for Haitians and Cubans "whose fate was to be decided at a later date by legislation" but who were allowed to be in the US.

[2] US President Ronald Reagan changed the policy in 1981 and sent the Coast Guard to intercept and repatriate Haitians fleeing by boat.

[2] The US had well established methods of intercepting, jailing, and repatriating Haitians by the time the largest wave of people seeking refuge arrived.

[2] The George H. W. Bush administration opted to continue the policy of repatriation that had been used for Haitian boat people previously when they were fleeing the Duvalier dictatorship.

[12] On February 28, 1992, the House of Representatives passed a bill introduced by Romano Mazzoli to allow Haitian refugees to remain at Guantanamo for 6 months.

[6] The administration expressed fears of the camp inspiring Haitians to try to leave and favored a harsher policy to discourage escaping by boat.

He changed his mind shortly before taking office in 1993 and instead continued the Kennebunkport Order policy of forced repatriation.

[17] In an effort to decrease the size of the camp, the US tried to convince other countries in the Caribbean or Latin America to accept either Haitian or Cuban refugees.

[9] The main problem for the camp in sustaining so many people was primarily infrastructure such as water, electricity, and sewage, not space.

[19] The UNHCR voiced disapproval of the US policy of forced repatriation of Haitians and suggested it was outside international refugee law in early 1995.

[1] Karma Chavez wrote, "These refugees lived in deplorable conditions, were subjected to violence and repression by the US military, deprived of proper medical care, and left without any legal recourse of rights.

"[4] According to the research of A. Naomi Paik, the food was rotten and the camps were squalid and lacked proper infrastructure for sanitation.

Medical procedures happened without consent administration of including Depo Provera, a long term birth control.

"The refugees question[ed] whether the U.S. state intended for them to live longer or die sooner," wrote Paik.

[4] On March 26, 1993, U.S. District Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. ruled that the "government either had to provide medical treatment for those with the AIDS virus or send them where they could be treated"[15] for what he famously deemed a "HIV prison camp.

[15] In early June 1993, Judge Johnson ordered that the remaining refugees be taken away from Guantanamo within ten days to two weeks.