Senior Biden administration officials spent the day in a volatile Haiti on Thursday listening to a cross-section of society on the country’s ambiguous future.
Brian Nichols, the newly confirmed assistant secretary of state overseeing the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, and Juan Gonzalez, National Security Council director, arrived in Port-au-Prince early Thursday after a brief stopover in Miami, where they met with Haitian and Cuban American leaders on the challenging issues concerning their respective nations.
Ahead of their Port-au-Prince visit, the duo said they had no agenda other than to listen to Haitians, who have been debating their country’s future and U.S. foreign policy following the recent assassination of their country’s president, Jovenel Moïse. With no constitutional response for the presidential void, Moïse’s death has triggered an ongoing power struggle with civic leaders wanting to replace the current interim prime minister, who was tapped by the beleaguered president just days before his death.
“We’re not going there to impose a solution or road map, we’re going there to listen, and particularly to understand what we can do, from the United States’ perspective and the broader international community to support Haitian efforts to find a democratic solution and a way forward,” Nichols said before arriving in Haiti.
“We’re not pressing for elections In the near term,” he added, “we’re pressing for support for Haitian-led solutions.”
Nichols, on the job just 15 days, and Gonzalez were with Haitians who have been pressing for a longer transition following the death of Moïse. The two senior officials also met with Prime Minister Ariel Henry late Thursday. Also on the schedule: meetings with members of the international community, Haitian political leaders and Foreign Minister Claude Joseph.
“We’re going there to understand the situation,” said Nichols, a career diplomat with experience in Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean. “We’re going to listen more than we are talking so that we can better understand how... we can help organize U.S. policy.”
Gonzalez said it’s a deliberate move that Nichols’ first foreign trip as assistant secretary is to Haiti. “The direction from the White House has been for us to be ambitious,” Gonzalez said. “The same direction we’ve gotten here [in Miami] in regard to Haiti is we want to make sure the diaspora communities have a seat at the table.”
Nichols said the purpose of meeting with members of the Haitian diaspora, as well as the Cuban-American community before heading to Haiti with Gonzalez was “to talk about what we can do to support the peoples of those nations.”
“We want to make sure that we have a people-centric foreign policy, and that we are approaching the challenges in our region with them in mind and drawing on the richness and the diversity of the diaspora communities. And there’s no better place to do that than Miami,” Nichols said.
Both Haiti and Cuba underwent political turmoil this summer. Thousands of Cubans protested on July 11 to demand an end to their nation’s dictatorship.
President Biden “has given us a clear goal: to do everything possible to help Cubans on the island and highlight the regimen’s abuses,” Gonzalez said.
Under Nichols, the State Department launched a campaign to denounce the repression of anti-government protesters who took to the streets in July. Hundreds are still in jail, some facing charges that could keep them in prison for several years.
“After July 11, things have changed,” Gonzalez said. “It’s been very clear that there is an authoritarian regime oppressing people just for advocating their rights and we are trying to highlight the abuses against people imprisoned just because they want Patria y Vida,” he said, referring to the song that has become an anti-government anthem.
Biden administration officials have met Cuban Americans regularly to discuss U.S. policy toward Cuba and how to best support the island’s pro-democracy movement.
“It’s positive that the administration shows an interest in how the diaspora feels about the future of Cuba,” said Tony Costa, president of the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba. “There was a healthy exchange of diverse opinions in the meeting about remittances, how to provide internet to Cubans and Cuba’s influence in other countries.”
The Biden administration is expected to announce a decision regarding remittances to Cuba, after a working group set to study the issue offered recommendations to the White House at the end of August. Official money transfers have been suspended since 2020, and the administration said it is looking at ways to allow remittances while minimizing the cut taken by the Cuban government. Biden also ordered his team to study how to help provide uncensored internet service to the Cubans, after the government cut access during the protests.
But the administration is not close to making an announcement yet because “some of these issues are challenging,” said Gonzalez. “The focus is to try to make sure that we come out with something that moves the ball forward in trying to get direct support to the Cuban people. And so we’re not going to rush that. We want to get it right.“
Nichols said the U.S. wants to focus on expanding humanitarian aid to the population, which has been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Gonzalez said the administration’s offer to provide vaccines to Cuba remains on the table, as long as “there’s involvement from an international humanitarian organization.”
Challenges in Haiti
In Haiti, there was the shocking middle-of-the night July 7 assassination of Moïse, followed by a major earthquake a month later.
Since then, an unprecedented rush by thousands of asylum-seeking Haitian migrants to the U.S. border with Mexico, the hasty deportation of many of the migrants, and the resignation of the administration’s top envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, has plunged Haiti deeper into chaos amid U.S. policy ambiguity.
Previewing the U.S. delegation’s trip to Haiti, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told McClatchy last week that the purpose of the visit is “to see what is the best way forward here, to make sure that we are talking to civil society so that we are hearing from the people of Haiti themselves to try to figure out what that path is.”
But the trip comes as members of the South Florida Haitian community, as well as leaders across Latin America and the Caribbean, press the Biden administration for more details on where it stands on Haiti’s political challenges.
“It’s an open question mark, what U.S. policy is today,” Dominican Foreign Minister Roberto Alvarez told the Miami Herald ahead of a Tuesday visit to the State Department to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
During a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly last week, Dominican President Luis Abinader made an impassioned plea on behalf of Haiti in which he said the international community can not abandon the country and that its ongoing crisis could not be tackled by one country alone.
Abinader also called for an external force to take control of the country, noting that without improvements to the security situation, Haiti can not hold elections. In the wake of Moïse’s murder, a political struggle ensued and continues today as some of his loyalists seek to oust interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry, and members of Haiti’s civil society seek to take charge of the country’s governance.
Abinader’s comments came as his nation became part of an informal alliance with Panama and Costa Rica around issues related to trade, democracy and human rights. During a meeting among the three presidents at the U.N., the conversation inevitably turned to the issue of migration and the number of Haitians going through Panama, Alvarez said.
“We are just trying to get the attention of the countries that have a leading role in the world. That’s the main objective, to get particularly the U.S.’s attention,” Alvarez said.
Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, Bocchit Edmond, raised concerns in a meeting with Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday over the recent treatment of Haitian migrants at the border.
“We do care about our migrants — you have to respect their dignity and rights,” Edmond told the Herald. “We are very concerned when it comes to their treatment.”
The two discussed the U.S. H1 visa program, the resumption of a family reunification program and better coordination between the U.S. and Haitian coast guards “to help them cover some part of the Caribbean Sea,” Edmond added.
In a statement on the meeting, Mayorkas said that the United States and Haiti have a “shared commitment to ensuring that Haitian migrants are treated with dignity and respect.”
Mayorkas also thanked Edmond for the “reintegration” of Haitian migrants back at home in Haiti. USAID has established a $5.5 million program to provide on-the-ground assistance to repatriated Haitian migrants.
“I look forward to continuing to work with the government of Haiti and other partners throughout the hemisphere as we work toward safe, orderly, and humane management of migration in the region,” Mayorkas said.
Earlier this week, Henry disbanded Haiti’s nine-member Provisional Electoral Council, effectively postponing next month’s general elections for a new president and parliament and the vote on a controversial constitutional referendum. The controversial council had been criticized by Moïse’s opponents prior to his death, but was supported by the international community despite protests from Haiti’s opposition and civil society groups that had refused to name representatives.
It is the fourth time Haiti’s election has been postponed, and Henry said that he would soon appoint a new electoral council.
Appointing a new, inclusive and representative council is the first step in staging elections, but Henry, who has been seeking support for his own “Political Accord for Peaceful and Effective Governance,” faces opposition to his rule. Hundreds of organizations in and out of Haiti are backing a broad-based commission on Haitian civil society that lays out a road map for a transitional government.
The United States, which has been pushing elections instead of a long transition period, has been accused of ignoring the commission, a point made by former U.S. Special Envoy Daniel Foote in a harsh resignation letter criticizing U.S. policy in Haiti and international support for Henry and his interim government, as well as the ongoing U.S. repatriation of Haitians.
