As gangs prepare to attack Haiti's capital, U.S. freezes critical aid for security mission

Miami Herald

04-02-2025

As hundreds of armed gang members, entrenched in the hills above Haiti's capital, await orders to attack the last enclaves not currently under their control, the multinational fight to end their terror is being impeded by the Trump administration's freeze on foreign aid.
The administration's 90-day halt of foreign assistance has frozen a $15 million contribution to the United Nations-controlled Trust Fund for the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission in Haiti, the global agency confirmed to the Miami Herald on Tuesday. The fund was set up at the insistence of the U.S. to give donors a way to contribute to the mission, which eight months after its deployment remains underfunded, ill-equipped and with just over a third of the 2,500 security personnel it's was slated to have.
On Tuesday, 70 Salvadoran soldiers arrived in Port-au-Prince. However, the soldiers, all aviation specialists, are in the country not to engage in combat but to provide medical evacuations, which until now were being handled by U.S. and Dominican military aircraft.
U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Tremblay told the Herald that on Jan. 28 the agency was was notified by the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs about the $15 million the U.S. had contributed to the fund.
'The communication relayed an 'immediate stop work order... pending further notice,' she said. The U.N. had already spent $1.7 million of the $15 million, Tremblay said.
President Donald Trump's wide-ranging freeze on foreign assistance has affected everything from health to security around the world. In Haiti, in particular, where the U.S. is the single largest donor, clinics offering HIV/AIDS treatment have been unable to get funding and security advisors hired to assist the Haiti National Police and Kenya-led mission have been laid off.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on a visit to Costa Rica on Tuesday, defended the freeze even amid reports that despite waivers for humanitarian programs and life-saving medications such as HIV/AIDS treatments some clinics in places like Africa have had to shut down.
'We froze foreign aid so that we can review those programs,' he said. 'I issued a blanket waiver that said if this is life-saving programs, if it's providing food or medicine or anything that is saving lives and is immediate and urgent, you're not included in the freeze.'
Last week, several police advisers hired by the U.S. government to assist the Haiti National Police and the Kenyans in operations, intelligence gathering and other areas critical to the anti-gang fight were informed that they were laid off until further notice. On Tuesday, police advisers from Canada, also part of the mission, departed Port-au-Prince asl well because of the cuts.
During his Senate confirmation hearing for his Cabinet position, Rubio thanked the Kenyans for their efforts in Haiti and signaled support for the mission. However, neither he nor Trump have said if the U.S. intends to maintain its financial support, which amounted to more than $600 million under the Biden administration. Nor has the new administration said if it will support a proposal by the previous administration to convert the current mission into a formal U.N. peacekeeping force, a move that requires the support of Russia and China on the U.N Security Council.
Just what the U.S. policy toward Haiti and its growing instability will be is expected to be the lead discussion item when Rubio meets with Dominican authorities, including President Luis Abinader, on Wednesday and Thursday. The two countries share the island of Hispaniola, and the Dominican Republic has been a leading advocate of getting foreign troops into Haiti.
Diego Da Rin, Haiti analyst for the International Crisis Group, said the $13 million the United States has frozen was never going to solve the financial problems of the Kenya-led mission. 'But this was a small yet crucial contribution at a time when the mission is struggling to strengthen its presence,' he said.
He noted that during Rubio's confirmation hearing, he called on Western Hemisphere nations to contribute more to the effort, indicating that the Trump administration may not be as ready as the Biden administration was to continue providing the lion's share of the funding.
Before leaving office in January, the Biden administration had privately warned Haitians that the mission's funding would end in March if it did not get a serious injection of cash. The Defense Department had identified an additional $120 million for Haiti, but the State Department, when asked, would not say if the money was disbursed before Biden left office.
In another example of how the U.S. freeze is affecting the effort, the Salvadoran soldiers who arrived in Haiti on Tuesday were transported by Canada and not by the U.S. military, which had transported the last contingent that including 150 Guatemalans and eight members of El Salvador's military.
Last week, a U.S. military aircraft arrived in Port-au-Prince with food for the multinational mission. However, another aircraft that was supposed to take supplies for the police and the multinational mission did not arrive, a source told the Herald. Also seemingly on hold is the deployment of the 600 remaining police officers from Kenya, which had committed 1,000 officers to the mission.
'The freezing of funds from the mission's primary financial backer puts its future in serious jeopardy,' Da Rin said. 'Without significant new contributions soon, not only will further deployments be impossible, but even the continued presence of troops already on the ground will be at risk.'
Gangs prepare for large-scale attack
Gangs have continued their siege of the capital and last week moved into the mountains of Kenscoff, southeast of Port-au-Prince, hoping to take over areas not currently under their control. There are an estimated 1,000 to 3,500 gang members in the hills. They've emptied out entire farming communities, killed at least 40 people and set fires to homes.
In recent days, they've also set up supply up lines for food and water. Haitian police and the multinational mission have deployed to the region, but the area is so broad and mountainous that the fight to push gangs back is proving difficult. On Monday, as the threat grew, many schools were closed and Haitians and international aid workers stayed home.
The U.N. said Tuesday that at least 5,626 people died in 2024 as a result of gang violence, self-defense groups and police operations. At least 1,732 of those deaths occurred between October and the end of December, when gangs carried out several mass killings in Port-au-Prince.
The report renewed concerns over the continued rape and sexual exploitation of women and girls by gang members, and the recruitment of children by gangs.
Yet despite the alarming reports, experts fear that neither the U.S. nor others in the international community grasp the gravity of the situation.
The new battlefront being opened by armed groups, for example, along the last remaining access route between the capital and the southern regions of Haiti brings gangs closer to the upscale communities of Pétion-Ville, Fermanthe and Kenscoff — all of which, until now, had managed to stay out of the gangs' grips.
Aware that gangs are preparing a large-scale offensive in hopes of taking over the enclaves, diplomats have been trying to get local authorities to come up with a plan and deploy what little resources they have.
'It is probably the worst timing ever and unfortunately the gangs know it,' said Romain Le Cour, a senior expert at the Switzerland-based Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.
Haiti's gangs, he said, are using the funding freeze and lack of attention by the U.S. to take advantage in the run-up to three important dates: Feb. 7, historically the day that a new president usually takes office, is always a tense political moment; Feb. 29, which will mark the one-year anniversary since the official public creation of the powerful Viv Ansanm gang coalition, and March 7, the date that Leslie Voltaire, the current head of the Transitional Presidential Council, is expected to pass the baton to Fritz Alphonse Jean in the rotating presidency.
'We're in for a very, very tense and crucial month. The problem of Haiti will not go away if the U.S. stops looking for funding. It's only going to get worse,' said Le Cour. 'Right now abandoning the ship is just going to push it into the arms of the gangs. '