Former State Department Special Envoy for Haiti Daniel Foote, who resigned on Sept. 22 in opposition to the Biden Administration’s mass deportation of Haitian migrants from Del Rio, Texas, was interviewed Oct. 7 by members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY). Foote made no opening statement but answered questions posed to him by committee members. His several incisive remarks about the State Department’s failed approach to Haiti, included the fact that he, as Special Envoy, was never even informed of the administration’s decision to begin mass deportations of Haitian migrants from Del Rio, Texas. “I was astounded,” he said. “I thought I was the Special Envoy, so maybe when we’re making policy decisions, someone would come to me and say ‘Is this good? Is this bad?’ But it didn’t happen.” He learned about the deportations from news reports, and said that the inhumane way in which the Haitians were deported, some shackled or tied up, was “against international law.” Foote said he wasn’t opposed to deportation when justified, but people need to be properly processed. Sending Haitians back into a horrendous security situation, with no means to survive, has the makings of a “human tragedy,” he warned.
It was clear from his remarks that Foote had locked horns with the State Department bureaucracy, with which he had major policy differences, and realized soon into his stint as Special Envoy that “there was a disagreement on policy and on the role of the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince” that was inevitably headed for a “collision.” It was a mistake, he said, for the State Department and the so-called Core Group of Western ambassadors and the UN to publicly back Prime Minister Ariel Henry immediately after the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and ignore the large coalition of civil society groups demanding a “Haitian-led” solution to the nation’s problems. He was insistent that Henry, who is suspected of involvement in Moïse’s assassination, not remain as the head of government. Pointing out that Henry could not survive “for a minute” without U.S. backing, he warned that “It’s critical that civil society has a voice in this new government … so I hope that our administration will stop imposing Ariel Henry on the Haitian people.”
A career foreign service officer who served as Assistant Secretary of State at the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and was posted to Afghanistan and Colombia as a specialist in counter-narcotics, Foote offered specific recommendations on how to begin to address Haiti’s dangerous security situation which he said “is everyday life in Port-au-Prince.” So, he continued, it’s illusory to think that elections could be held sometime soon, as the U.S. and other Western governments are demanding. “The gangs run Port-au-Prince. It is in their control, it is in their hands; they are better equipped and better armed than the police. They control the main highways and transit routes not only across Port-au-Prince but across the country and they are now moving out of the slum areas,” he said.
