Almost every night, I get phone calls from people in areas of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, under attack by gangs. “Please ask the police to send officers,” one friend said. “Please help me. We’re going to die!” he told me.
Haiti’s emergency phone line, our 911, is pretty useless — often, no one even answers. The police are spread thin and outgunned by murderous gangs, which are taking over new neighborhoods and importing arms and ammunition from the United States. A Kenyan-led international force, supported by the United States and the United Nations, provides help inconsistently.
So people seek assistance anywhere they can, including from me, the director of a human rights organization living in Port-au-Prince. For years, my organization has pushed for police reform, and I have contacts throughout the force. What can I do? I phone police operations coordinators around the capital and tell them people need help. Sometimes when I call, the police intervene. Other times, they are tied up with fighting elsewhere. People I know have run through gunfire to escape a gang attack because no one was coming to rescue them.
If the Trump administration is serious about its goal of making the United States safer and more prosperous, with tighter control on migration, it cannot stop engaging in places like Haiti.
Since last spring, when gangs in Haiti banded together to attack the government, they have mostly stopped fighting one another for neighborhood control and instead work as a united front to rape, torture and kill. Gangs also fight the police and jointly seize territory. They have attacked hospitals, pharmacies, schools and banks. Gang leaders are finding new ways to block security forces, by digging ditches in tracks and drilling holes into walls to sneak into buildings. They also hide weapons on donkeys’ backs, placing the ammunition inside drums used to carry water and fuel.
The Haitian government is too compromised to confront them effectively. For years, government officials have paid off and armed gang members in exchange for protection and intimidating their rivals. International sanctions against Haitian officials show the ubiquity of government ties to gangs, corruption and drug and arms trafficking. Sanctions from the United States and Canada have targeted some of the most powerful people in Haiti, including two former presidents, three former prime ministers and several cabinet ministers. Now even the new transition council, which took office under an agreement brokered last spring with support from the United States, includes three members who have been accused of bribery and were summoned to appear in court on those charges.
The transition council members also seem more focused on squabbling among themselves than on vanquishing the gangs. Police officials tell me they lack ammunition, tear gas, drones, armored vehicles and spare parts. They say they do not have sufficient personnel or training. The prime minister and transition council members have told me for months they are working on it — but nothing changes, except for the escalation of gang attacks.
Amid all of this, the United States has suddenly cut off aid that was keeping many Haitians alive. Few places in the world were as dependent on the United States Agency for International Development as Haiti was. The agency has spent hundreds of millions of dollars annually for years on health, food and education — including, for instance, funding about 40 percent of the primary health care Haitians receive. The Trump administration has also begun to dismantle another federal agency, the Inter-American Foundation, that aids Haiti.
I acknowledge that such aid programs have had deep problems. U.S.A.I.D. has often been wasteful and ineffective, and it has undermined Haitian farmers and businesses, as well as the government’s authority. U.S. officials have intervened in Haitian elections, helping to disqualify one candidate and advance another, and U.S.-funded infrastructure projects have failed to deliver results. The U.S.-backed international force has not quelled gang attacks.
But the impact of this lightning-fast withdrawal of U.S. foreign aid funds is brutal. Thousands of Haitians have lost access to health care. Lunch programs for children in schools have closed for lack of food. Now, when families come to my office to report gang attacks, they often haven’t eaten in days. We refer them to U.N. programs that provide food, but there’s not enough. They often need urgent medical care, after suffering rape or other injuries, and have no place to sleep. We no longer have places to send them.
The Trump administration moved to end eligibility for protected status for about half a million Haitians living in the United States and cut a humanitarian visa program for thousands more. In recent years, many Haitians fled to the United States with visas because gang members threatened their lives, killed their relatives and destroyed their homes. If their protected status is removed and they are deported to Haiti, they will have no one to receive them and no place to stay. More than a million people are already internally displaced.
The lack of stability in Haiti will affect other countries, too. More Haitians will almost certainly flee — to the United States, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere. Haitian gangs’ unchecked expansion beyond their neighborhood bases into transnational drug markets and criminal networks is already bringing illicit drugs to the United States. Some gang leaders have made political demands, announced the formation of political parties and even threatened to overthrow the government. This renders Haiti’s politics even more volatile and makes Haitian gangs a greater threat to other Caribbean countries and the United States.
There’s a lot the United States can do. It should continue to support the vetting, training and equipping of Haiti’s struggling police force and shattered judiciary. U.S. officials should ramp up the inspection of shipments destined for Haiti to end the traffic of arms and ammunition and prosecute anyone who breaks U.S. laws trafficking arms and drugs to and from Haiti. American officials should also press the government to create and enforce anticorruption policies.
These days in Port-au-Prince, we are teetering on the edge of a total gang takeover. At night, as gangs go on the offensive, many parts of the city are dark because fighting has largely cut electricity. My friends and colleagues stay awake, terrified, listening to the gun battles and texting one another.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the United States will continue to fund the Kenyan-led force intended to support the police. “We will help,” he told reporters at a February news conference in Santo Domingo. If Mr. Rubio really wants to help, he should make it U.S. policy to weaken gangs and strengthen Haitian institutions. In the middle of the night, people should be able to call the police and get help.
