The spiraling chaos in Haiti has raised anxieties around the region about the long-term repercussions of the country’s political and economic crisis. Increasingly since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, large swaths of Haiti have been controlled by armed gangs that maintain power using violence, sexual assault, kidnappings, and torture. Gangs controlled about 60 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince, the United Nations said in December, prompting 155,000 people to flee their homes. Amid the unrest, thousands were facing famine-like conditions. In response, many Haitians have left. U.S. officials encountered Haitians crossing the U.S.-Mexico border more than 20,500 times between October and January, although numbers have dropped in recent weeks following the Biden administration’s new policy to immediately expel many to Mexico while also opening up a legal pathway for some who apply before reaching the border, as Muzaffar Chishti and Kathleen Bush-Joseph recently described. Meanwhile, the U.S. Coast Guard this year is on pace to surpass the nearly 7,200 interdictions of Haitian migrants at sea in FY 2022, marking an uptick last seen in the 1990s. Elsewhere, the Dominican Republic, which occupies the other half of the island of Hispaniola, and the Bahamas have ramped up border security to prevent unauthorized Haitian migration. While countries have declined to take up the Haitian government’s request for a military intervention, Canada has sent navy vessels to the country to assist with intelligence and monitor for migrants taking to the seas on rickety boats. Many Haitians have taken interest in the new U.S. policy, which offers humanitarian parole to thousands of Haitians who apply from their origin country and have a U.S. sponsor. Yet at least in the short term, that exit route may be complicating the government’s efforts to restore order. According to Haiti’s immigration department, at least one-third of Haiti’s 9,000 police officers might leave the country—many aiming for the United States—and new demand for passports has prompted the agency to open a separate office just for police (U.S. officials say fewer than 20 members of the Haiti National Police have been admitted under the parole program so far). Sadly, humanitarian exodus from the impoverished country is not a new development. In fact, many of the Haitians who arrived at the U.S. land border in recent months were coming from Latin American countries where they had moved years ago following a devastating 2010 earthquake. Unlike the coordinated approach seen in response to massive outflows from Ukraine or Venezuela, there has been little planning to respond to this emigration over the long term. The conditions in Haiti are dire, and many are running out of options. Julian Hattem
Editor, Migration Information Source
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