Camp Bulkeley

Camp Bulkeley was a detention center located within the United States military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where HIV-positive refugees and asylum seekers were held during the early 1990s. After two years of protest, including a mention by presenters Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins during the 1993 Academy Awards, the camp was declared unconstitutional by United States district court Judge Sterling Johnson Jr.. In a negotiated agreement with attorneys for the detainees, that decision was vacated and the camp was closed shortly thereafter.

Following the September 30, 1991 overthrow of democratically elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in a military coup d'etat, a large-scale exodus of Hatian boat people ensued. The United States Coast Guard rescued a total of 41,342 Haitians during 1991 and 1992, more than the number of rescued refugees from the previous 10 years combined.

Just days after the coup d'etat, the administration of US President George H.W. Bush ordered the Coast Guard to stop bringing fleeing Haitians to the US, and instead to redirect their boats to the US military base at Guantanamo. There, the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) ruled that more than half of these refugees were economic migrants, not political refugees, and had them deported back to Haiti. Others were deemed political refugees, but before being allowed entry to the United States, the INS tested them for HIV. Those who tested positive were denied entry under a 1987 law barring emigration of HIV positive individuals into the US. In all, 267 Haitian refugees were held at Guantanamo, making Camp Bulkeley the world's first detention center for people with HIV/AIDS.

The creation of the "Guantanamo HIV Camp," as it was commonly known, infuriated AIDS activists in the United States, who immediately began protesting against it and the Bush administration. During his 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton declared the camp inhumane and illegal, but upon becoming President, his administration took no steps to close the camp.

On January 29, 1993, the detainees - many having spent a year and a half at Camp Bulkeley - went on a hunger strike. Yale Law School students, who had helped file legal challenges to the policy of holding HIV+ refugees at Camp Bulkeley, joined the hunger strike in solidarity. After one week, the Yale students "passed" the hunger strike to students at Harvard, who in turn passed the strike to students at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Hunger strikes, rallies and protests were organized on college campuses around the country, with tens of thousands of students participating. These protests, in conjunction with Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins using their appearance on the 1993 Academy Awards broadcast to bring attention to the refugees' situation, brought increasing political pressure on the Clinton administration to close the camp.

On June 8, 1993, US district court Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. declared the camps unconstitutional in a scathing judicial opinion. "The Haitians' plight is a tragedy of immense proportion, and their continued detainment is totally unacceptable to this court," he wrote. The Clinton administration negotiated an agreement where that decision was vacated, and the refugees were allowed to enter the United States. By June 18, all the refugees had been relocated to New York or Miami and the camp was closed.

According to a 2003 article in the magazine The Nation, many of the HIV+ refugees held at Camp Bulkeley still have not had their asylum applications processed. Refugees not eventually granted asylum may be forcibly deported to Haiti, over a decade after first arriving at Guantanamo.