Still smarting from the international backlash that came in response to its brutal mass deportation of 4,000 Haitians over the past two weeks, the Biden administration is sending Assistant Secretary for Western Hemispheric Affairs Brian Nichols and Juan Gonzalez, the National Security Council’s Director for the Western Hemisphere, on a mission to Haiti. They began today in Miami with meetings with Haitian-American and Cuban-American representatives, and tomorrow they will be in Port-au-Prince, where they will meet with Prime Minister Ariel Henry and with Foreign Minister Claude Joseph to discuss a “Haitian-led process charting the path to democratic elections in Haiti, the Haitian migration response, security and support for a recovery from the Aug. 14 earthquake and COVID-19 pandemic,” according to a State Department’s announcement yesterday.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, meanwhile, has spent the last few days loudly insisting that sending deportees to a Haiti that suffers from horrific gang violence, COVID, poverty, joblessness and homelessness, is no big problem. Contradicting statements he himself made in May and July, in which he cited the dangerous security situation, social unrest, poverty and COVID as reasons for extending Temporary Protected Status to Haitians living in the U.S., Mayorkas told CNN on Sept. 26 that “we made a determination, based upon the facts, that in fact individuals could be safely returned to Haiti.” Two days earlier, he told White House reporters that “we have continued to study the conditions in Haiti, and we have in fact determined despite the tragic and devastating earthquake, that Haiti is in fact capable of receiving individuals.”
Mayorkas knows this isn’t true. Local authorities in Port-au-Prince have begged the Biden administration to not send any planes with deportees after 3:00 p.m., because of the dangerous security situation — that gangs, and not the government, control the streets after that time. The pathetic Prime Minister Henry, who is in his post because the State Department wants him there, also told CNN he “understood” why the U.S. had to deport those Haitians who had entered the U.S. illegally and promised he would welcome his fellow countrymen with open arms. It is noteworthy that in his Sept. 25 video address to the UN General Assembly, Henry invited member states to “consider the aspirations of the Republic of China, Taiwan,” which he said, “can play a non-negligible role” in UN initiatives aimed at maintaining peace and international security as well as cooperation and multilateral development, the Taiwan News reported Sept. 26. Haiti is one of the few countries in the world that still diplomatically recognizes Taiwan, rather than China.
