On Thursday Aug. 27, the same day another deportation flight to Haiti landed in Cap Haitien on Haiti’s northern coast, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted a vicious, sadistic video on X of an “apparent deportation flight” showing handcuffed Haitians with their feet chained and another chain around their waist boarding a plane in rainy weather—evoking images of slavery and Southern chain gangs.
The video has sparked outrage and is clearly intended to terrify Haitian communities of former TPS holders. The men are in prison garb, and the message on the screen is: “Haiti TPS has been TERMINATED. LEAVE IMMEDIATELY OR BE DEPORTED.” Haitian music is playing in the background. Viewers are told that anyone in the U.S. with a terminated TPS “are here illegally,” so LEAVE. Common Dreams quoted Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, who said: “the White House wanted videos of Black men in chains, so they stripped them all of status.” David Bier of the CATO Institute adds, “the sadism depicted in the video is relentless.”
This occurs against the backdrop of the horrific Aug. 23-24 gang massacre of 47 people and hostage taking of 50 in the Haitian municipality of Kenscoff, which led the UN Security Council to hold an Aug. 28 emergency meeting to address the failures of the country’s security forces. Carlos Ruiz Massieu, head of the UN’s Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), warned UN members that “Without improved security conditions, efforts to strengthen governance, accelerate the political process and advance electoral preparations will remain severely constrained and vulnerable to setbacks.” There was widespread demand that the still undermanned Gang Suppression Force, mandated by the UNSC a year ago, must be quickly increased to the full force of 5,500 troops instead of the current 1,083. The UNSC meeting also warned that the existing UN arms embargo on Haiti has failed to stem the flow of sophisticated weapons into the country, largely coming from South Florida.
In a move that will further exacerbate Haiti’s crisis, the Trump administration just announced it will now increase deportation flights, from once a month to once a week, to “speed up the pace” to remove as many of the 350,000 Haitians in the U.S. who have lost TPS status as quickly as possible, although this isn’t logistically arranged yet. On Aug. 27, when two deportation flights landed at the small Cap Haitien airport at the same time, one carrying deportees expelled from the Bahamas, mass confusion and distress ensued among the arrivals, and the U.S. deportees had to wait in a tent so the other group could be processed first. UN Special Envoy for Human Rights in Haiti, Bill O’Neill, told the New York Times, “this is insane. There is no way the Haitian government can handle this. There is nowhere these people can go.”
