President Joe Biden’s hasty policies to address the burgeoning migrant crisis three years ago contributed to the collapse of the Haitian state in 2024. Dan Foote, who served as Biden’s special envoy to Haiti in 2021 during his re-election campaign, told Breitbart News.
“He wanted to get over it.” [2022] Midterm exam… [but] It has now been unraveled in the preparatory stage [2024] The election couldn’t have come at a worse time,” Foote told Breitbart News on March 18.
More than 15,000 Haitian migrants threatened to cross the Del Rio River in Texas in 2021, creating a political crisis for Biden that was amplified on television. At the time, American officials were helping Haiti elect a new government to replace Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who took office just days before the assassination of its last president, Juvenel Moïse, that year. Henry didn’t want to resign, so he told Biden, “I’m going to continue accepting deportees, but you guys will allow me to stay in power,” Foote recalled.
Biden stopped pressuring Haiti to hold elections and kept Henry in power. In exchange, Foote said, Henry signed key documents allowing Biden to return the Del Rio migrants to Haiti.
Foote, a former State Department official and former U.S. ambassador, said before the agreement, “As a professional diplomat, we were working very well to reach a legitimate agreement that I believe was working well to rebuild Haiti’s unstable political system.” “There was a political agreement reached.”
Mr Foote said: tennessee star It was announced this week that he had been removed from the Biden-Henry deal.
When I saw the Del Rio encampment on the nightly news and reported that they were all being deported, I went to work and said, Are we going to deport these people back to Haiti? Don’t you think you should have informed the envoy? ”
“I want nothing to do with the United States’ inhumane and counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti,” Foote wrote in a subsequent article. resignation letter To Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Haiti has fallen into further turmoil since the Biden deal canceled scheduled elections. Earlier this month, Henry, who had traveled to Kenya, was unable to return home due to armed groups taking over the streets, leaving him stranded in Puerto Rico. He announced that he would be resigning following his appointment to the Interim Presidential Council, but as of this writing he has not yet resigned.
The disruption threatens Biden’s legal ability to continue sending migrants back to Haiti during the 2024 campaign, Foote said.
Haiti’s neighbor, the Dominican Republic (DR), has a different strategy. It has already strengthened the border between the two countries and deported many Haitians living illegally on the other side of the wall.
For more information on the DR’s border wall with Haiti, see this one I published a year ago. https://t.co/Q8jPGJ1SZ5 https://t.co/sYIocb3N8l pic.twitter.com/Yp5pf7rvor
— Mark Krikorian (@MarkSKrikorian) March 19, 2024
Many Haitian immigrants seek refuge by sea to nearby Florida. For this reason, Mr. Biden is at risk of experiencing a mass exodus of poor immigrants during his reelection period.
Mr. Biden’s Cuban-born pro-immigration border secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, has stopped migrant boats from leaving the country by intercepting them at sea, sending them back to Haiti without landing them, and forcing them to apply for asylum in U.S. courts. .
Maritime repatriation policy While negotiations for a new administration take place, the Biden-Henry agreement remains in place.
Although this repatriation policy cannot stop all Haitian migration to other countries, it may help prevent a repeat of the Del Rio crisis on Florida beaches during the 2024 campaign.
Mayorkas, an immigration advocate, has welcomed about 400,000 Haitian immigrants into the United States since 2021. Many of the migrants came from South America, but about 150,000 Haitians have been granted parole visas to fly to the United States. Immigration on parole continues.
Immigrants, many of them middle-class, are needed to stabilize a country struggling with deep class divides between a wealthy minority and a poor majority. These migrants include many of the 1,600 police officers who have left the security forces since early 2023, helping domestic armed gangs establish a presence on Haiti’s streets.
“For the future of Haiti, it is [the Biden migration] It’s probably not the greatest thing in the world,” Foote said diplomatically.
Many Haitians are aware that migration has caused debilitating brain damage.
“How can a country rebuild if 80% of its young, educated workforce leaves the country?” asked Louis Marcelin, a Haitian-born social scientist, in a 2022 paper. article for miami herald. “We cannot rebuild our country without human resources, educated and skilled young people to help implement the policy recommendations that are coming.”
Conor Bohan, founder of the Haiti Education and Leadership Program, said about 84 percent of Haitians with higher education go to study in the United States, Canada and other countries in search of opportunities. Said Newsweek 2021. Although his program trains local leaders and entrepreneurs, “the brain drain is increasing to the point where immigration equals success and success is defined by immigration,” Bohan told Newsweek. “It is impossible to advance and rebuild the country if the educated classes continue to flee.”
This is despite Biden’s surrogates accelerating the poaching of middle-class people from Haiti for use in the United States. Foote said Biden’s lawmakers are now working to rebuild Haiti’s government. A new government, he said, could use Haitian immigration to extract valuable concessions from the United States.
For example, Mexico, Venezuela, China, and Cuba largely refuse to accept the return of many illegal immigrants, including criminal immigrants captured in the United States. Foote said, “If Haiti had a government that represented the people in any way, it would do exactly that and say, ‘Stop sending these people back here. Unless we make some kind of deal, we’re not going to tell them what to do. I can’t deal with it,’ he said. ‘And today’s transaction is [deposed] ariel henry [saying] “I will continue to bring back deportees, but you must keep me in power.”
If there is no agreement, “you… [migrants],” he said. “That’s one of the reasons I think [the Biden administration is] There’s a scramble because we can’t do business with anyone until we have an alternative government. ”
“Somebody would have to talk to the gangs” to get that agreement, Foote said, adding that armed street groups are part of Haiti’s political system.
He explained that the gang grew up serving as enforcers for wealthy Haitian families. ” [gangs] signed a contract with elite And as for the political class in the last five years…they are enforcers who work for the elites when it is in their interest, and they are not run by the elites. These people are independent characters… [and] They are much stronger than anyone else. So they’re independent contractors looking to help. ”
He said wealthy people who lost control of armed groups were “feeling the pain”.
This group is “breaking into containers and stealing everything from ports. They’re on their way up. [wealthy] “The hill, there were gunshots a few blocks away, so this year it’s affecting the bourgeoisie as well.”
Mr Foote said the gang had become a semi-political armed group. “Leaders are talking about revolution and asking for amnesty in this political conversation that’s going on right now, because they’re starting to understand that… they can’t run around with impunity forever. I think it’s because there are.”
The scenery is echoed Judes Jonassas, a Haitian who has helped run charities in Haiti, said:
Now the situation has completely changed. Because the gangs started working together. What is clear is that the gangs are using their control over the capital, Port-au-Prince, to become a legitimate political force in the negotiations being brokered. foreign governments, including the United States, France, and Caribbean countries;
Foote said Haiti needs a middle class to bridge the gap between the country’s wealthy elite and its poor.America’s goal should be to “transfer power from elites” [who] They operate with impunity, without a voice from below, to give a voice to the middle and lower classes. “It doesn’t have to be the loudest voice — they’ve never had a voice before,” he said.
The United States does not have “the authority to impose a social contract between the Haitian people and the thieves,” Foote said. The Haitian middle class exported to the United States has little political influence beyond serving as an example of the potential for relative prosperity, he explained.
“The people who are here now are no longer Haitian to Haitians because they were rescued… [and] If you have young children, can afford a house, and can get a car, you can’t go back anytime. ”
