Rubio's plan to designate Haiti's gangs as terrorists could deepen humanitarian crisis

In the areas of Haiti controlled by gangs, nothing moves without their getting a cut: not food, not fuel, not even humanitarian aid.

Their extortion racket is so extensive that the country’s finance minister, Alfred Metellus, estimates that gangs, which charge $2,000 to allow passage for a shipping container, are pulling as much as $75 million a year from the ransoms they charge to allow goods transiting through the Dominican Republic to arrive at their destinations. Metellus made the comments in an interview this week with Haiti’s Le Nouvelliste newspaper.

That reality is prompting concerns that a plan by the U.S. State Department to designate the country’s gangs as foreign terrorist organizations could exacerbate suffering at a time when more than five million Haitians are struggling to find food and nearly 250,000 of the one million Haitians who are internally displaced reside in makeshift encampments, some with no latrines and dirt floors.

“The reality is that almost no commercial or humanitarian activity takes place in or near Port-au-Prince without some level of negotiation or payment to gangs. Even the U.S. ambassador acknowledged speaking with gangs,” said Jake Johnston, an analyst on Haiti with the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of “Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti.”

“The effect of this policy is likely to be the further isolation of Haiti, a de facto embargo that harms those most impoverished and does little to alter the power of the gangs,” he added.

Johnston’s concerns were echoed Wednesday by two Democratic lawmakers following a briefing by the State Department to members of Congress about the planned designation, which was first reported by the Miami Herald earlier this month. The designation, already imposed on several Latin American criminal groups by the Trump administration, relies on the use of the centuries’ old Alien Enemies Act. The designation would allow the U.S. government to target Haiti’s powerful Viv Ansanm gang coalition, now in control of up to 90% of metropolitan Port-au-Prince, and the Gran Grif gang operating in parts of the rural Artibonite region.

Under the plan, gang members and their enablers would face criminal sanctions, including possible imprisonment in El Salvador’s maximum-security prison, a senior administration official told the Herald at the time.

While the plan has support among some groups in Haiti, it is prompting concerns that aid groups and others in Haiti will face the impossible choice of trying to help at the risk of being labeled terrorists or letting the population suffer further.

In a letter sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida, the only Haitian-American member of Congress and current co-chair of the House Haiti caucus, expressed “grave concern” about the designation.

The lawmakers fear it will unintentionally exacerbate the suffering of Haitians and help gangs consolidate control. They are demanding answers from Rubio on the administration’s rationale for the designation.

“While we support efforts to target the financial support of violent gangs wreaking havoc on innocent Haitians, we are concerned that an FTO designation, absent a clear, comprehensive U.S. strategy to defeat the gangs and their enablers, is counterproductive and will only exacerbate Haitians’ suffering,” the lawmakers said.

Meeks and Cherfilus-McCormic noted that the State Department has already made cuts to health services and humanitarian aid while diseases like scabies and cholera are on the rise in Haiti. If aid delivery across Port-au-Prince and the Artibonite region is undermined, Haitians will be further punished, they argued.

A foreign-terrorist organization “designation imposes broad legal and financial sanctions that deter non-governmental organizations and international agencies from operating due to fear of legal exposure — even when their work is purely humanitarian in nature,” the lawmakers wrote.

The representatives are not alone in their concerns about the possible chilling effect the designation would have on the delivery of aid in Haiti, where non-governmental organizations, community groups and others employ various techniques — including making donations to gangs — in order to get humanitarian assistance to those living under the control of the armed groups.

Many do so through “foundations” that several gangs have set up to serve as fronts for aid delivery. The issue, however, is so sensitive that aid groups refuse to speak about it, even privately. They are also reluctant to discuss the planned designation but also note they are concerned about the deepening humanitarian crisis.

“We do not take a position on any State’s use of such designations and refrain from communicating publicly on them,” said a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, which operates in Haiti. “However, the ICRC will always call to all concerned to make all necessary efforts to prevent further humanitarian consequences on the ground, to facilitate humanitarian action and to preserve the required humanitarian space — particularly, regarding Haiti, we call for all concerned to protect the population and prevent a humanitarian collapse in the country.”

In a new report published on Wednesday, the United Nations noted that the human rights situation during the first quarter of this year was marked by mass attacks, including killings, kidnappings and sexual violence.

At least 1,617 people were killed and 580 were injured in violence involving armed gangs, self-defense groups and members of the population, between January and March, the report said. At the same time, 161 kidnappings for ransom were documented, 63% of them in the Artibonite region, where two Kenyan police officers were also killed this year.

Along with the intensification of the violence has also come a shift in which armed groups today rely less on kidnappings and more on their extortion rackets. This has allowed them “to further insert themselves within local economies and making it more difficult to dismantle them,” the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, a Switzerland-based group, said in its latest report examining the recent push by Haiti’s gangs to expand their territorial control. The gangs impose taxes on all activities, within the territories they control as well as on the country’s main roads, as well as around port or border infrastructures, the report said.

That has raised questions about how the U.S. intends to arrest gang leaders when they have no troops in country, the future of the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission remains uncertain and even the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office isn’t active.

“Some U.S. officials see the FTO designation as a way to escalate pressure and increase the risk for individuals who support gangs. In theory, it could also make it easier to go after individuals or networks involved in arms trafficking,” said Diego Da Rien, a Haiti specialist with the International Crisis Group, which closely monitors the security crisis. “But the negatives of an FTO designation often outweigh the positives.”

Da Rien, said the designation “is a heavily politicized tool that’s rarely reversible and has limited coercive effect on actors already outside the law. If the goal is ever to bring gangs into a legal framework, the FTO label makes that far more difficult.”

Haiti’s gang problem, which includes the recruitment of children, is unlikely to be solved through force alone, he said, and at some point will likely require “a demobilization process, including exit ramps for minors, something an FTO designation” would make difficult.

“FTO designations would also disrupt local violence-reduction efforts, humanitarian aid operations, and even trade, particularly since most access and commerce involves negotiation” with gangs, Da Rien added.

“Businesses and aid groups in these kinds of situations often over-comply, cutting off operations entirely even if enforcement is limited, due to the severe civil and criminal penalties attached to FTOs,” he said.

Since he took office, President Donald Trump has invoked the war-time Alien Enemies Act to go after noncitizens, and has designated six criminal groups from Latin America as foreign terrorist organizations. But both the designation and his broad use of executive authority have come under attack, as Venezuelan nationals targeted as members of the Tren de Aragua gang have no criminal records.

That worries both Da Rien and Johnston, who fear the designation could be used to justify deportations of Haitians or visa denials.

“This seems more about domestic politics and giving the administration a justification to deport upwards of hundreds of thousands of Haitians than about addressing the dire security situation inside Haiti,” Johnston said.

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