US envoy to Haiti resigns and denounces deportations
Disagreeing with Joe Biden’s policy on Haitian migrants, US envoy to Haiti Daniel Foote resigned Thursday.
More than 15,000 migrants are gathered at the Texas border.
AFP
The American envoy to Haiti Daniel Foote has resigned, denouncing in a scathing letter the “inhuman” expulsions by the United States of thousands of Haitian migrants to their country plagued by the terror of armed gangs.
“I will not join in the inhuman and counterproductive decision of the United States to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where our officials are confined in secure complexes due to the danger that represent the armed gangs controlling daily life, ”asserts Daniel Foote in his letter of resignation dated Wednesday and addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “Our political approach in Haiti remains deeply flawed and my recommendations have been ignored and rejected, when they have not been modified,” he denounces.
Asked at a press conference in New York, Antony Blinken on Thursday thanked the diplomat for his work, while adding: “This does not mean that we cannot have disagreements on the right approach”. “The level of desperation among the migrants can only strongly affect us all, so I really understand the passion that surrounds this case,” he added.
“False” accusations
His spokesperson Ned Price had earlier rejected in a more direct way the accusations of Daniel Foote, “simply false” according to him. The envoy “did not take the opportunity to voice” his “concerns about migrants during his tenure, and instead chose to resign,” he lamented. Another official accused him of trying to go beyond his remit in US policy in Haiti.
Tens of thousands of migrants, mostly Haitians, have been piling up for several weeks in the Mexican towns of Tapachula, on the border with Guatemala, and Ciudad Acuña, on the border with Texas, where they live in the heat and in unsanitary conditions. In the latter city, tension reigned Thursday after the deployment of a hundred Mexican police, AFP journalists noted.
The police were deployed after the announcement made by the National Institute of Migration (INM) indicating that the situation of migrants would be examined in order to return them to the city where they initially applied for asylum. Fleeing poverty and chaos, these migrants seek refuge in the United States, many of them after crossing a dozen countries such as Panama and Colombia, where some 19,000 migrants, also mostly Haitians, are stranded. at the border.
1400 expulsions
The United States had suspended the deportations of Haitian migrants in an irregular situation after the earthquake that devastated the southern half of Haiti on August 14, but the regrouping in a few days of more than 15,000 migrants, under a bridge in Texas, has changed the game.
Since Sunday, the US migration services have already chartered 12 flights to return more than 1,400 people, including several hundred children, to the capital Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien, the country’s second city.
Daniel Foote was appointed on July 22 with the objective of “facilitating peace and stability” and the holding of “free and fair” elections after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, killed in his private residence by an armed commando on July 7.
“Ignobles”
His resignation is a new blow for Joe Biden, after his parliamentary difficulties and Afghanistan: his policy of mass expulsions of Haitian migrants to their country in the midst of security chaos is thus criticized – with harsh words – by his own emissary. . In a rare criticism, the Democratic leader of the Senate Chuck Schumer had also urged Tuesday Joe Biden to immediately end the expulsions described as “despicable”.
Antony Blinken has blamed this on the “disinformation” that leads Haitians to believe they can arrive and stay in the country thanks to a status that in fact only concerns those who are already in the United States.
The United States is one of the main powers likely to exert an influence on Haiti, a country which it occupied militarily for 19 years, from 1915 to 1934. But President Joe Biden has ruled out any sending of American soldiers, despite the request in this direction of the Haitian government which wanted troops to secure the Caribbean country.
Found an error? Report now.
–
