America Needs a Stable Haiti— Send in the Salvadorians!
By Alex C.
The Trump administration has announced it is going to revoke the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of 530,000 Haitians, Cubans, and Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. In a vacuum this is a wise decision, these immigrants mostly showed up without invitation, wandered across our border, and received a warm welcome from the now-past Biden administration. Americans did not invite these people into our country, and we elected a president to sent them home. Yet, Haiti is such a disaster-zone that without some real effort to stabilize the country Haitians will continue to make the dangerous journey to the United States and our neighboring countries. Even since Trump book office boats carrying dozens and even hundreds of Haitians have been intercepted off the coast of Florida. The Coast Guard clearly expects this to continue as they are reportedly ‘surging assets’ to Southern Florida in the wake of Trumps’ executive orders.
Haiti itself is spiraling deeper into chaos. Gangs control much of Port-au-Prince, the capital, and they continue to displace people. On March 19th the United Nations issued another statement about gangs overrunning yet more of the capital and displacing more people. The Catholic Archbishop Max Leroy Mesidor has issued yet another call for the international community to help Haiti. To give you but a small glimpse of Haiti’s hell: sexual violence against children has increased 1,000%.
This is despite a current international mission in Haiti already on the ground. The Multinational Security Support Mission (MSSM) was sanctioned by the UN Security Council and is led by Kenya. To say the mission is floundering would be to put it mildly — it is underfunded, understaffed, and unable to stem the violence. Kenya alone promised to send 1,000 officers to Haiti and that the MSSM would be composed of over 3,000 personnel. At least available count only 857 MSSM deployed personnel are in the country. It’s clear the existing approach isn’t working.
All of this sounds like I am building up to a proposal for the United States to land troops in Haiti – I am decidedly not proposing that the US intervene in Haiti. The Biden administration was right to rule out yet another US intervention. (There have been at least three direct American interventions in Haiti—the most recent, by Bill Clinton in 1994, was called “Operation Uphold Democracy“).
Americans still have a vested national interest in regional stability and I believe we should should pivot to a bold alternative: accepting El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele’s offer to tackle Haiti’s crisis with U.S. funding and logistical support.
Our readers will surely know by now that Bukele is a leader with a near-90% approval rating and that he was able to crush gang violence in El Salvador, making it the safest country in the Western Hemisphere.
His zero-tolerance approach transformed El Salvador, and it could stabilize Haiti, allowing for Haitian migrants to return home and for that country to begin to rebuild. As mentioned, El Salvador’s president has already offered to take on the task. In late 2024 he Tweeted (Xed?) “we can fix it” and then added:
“But we'll need a UNSC (United Nations Security Council) resolution, the consent of the host country, and all the mission expenses to be covered.”
Since this Tweet (this X?) El Salvador has sent 78 troops to the country, but the operation in Haiti is failing. Aside from the lack of funding (which the US has just cut off), the lackluster mission in Haiti – though well intentioned on the part of Kenya I am sure – is unable to tackle other issues like the massive amounts of arms smuggling coming out of Florida, according to Responsible Statecraft. Where, incidentally, more than 550,000 Haitian diaspora live.
It's time to give Bukele the resources he needs and a carte blanche style mandate to get Haiti under control. The Trump administration should provide Bukele with the cash, planes, ships, and logistical support he needs to get as many troops as he needs into Haiti. For an idea of how much it will cost: Bukele implemented his domestic territorial control plan for $575.2 million. Still, Haiti is 2,640 miles (7,000 kilometres) larger than El Salvador and has a population 5.4 million persons larger than Bukele’s homeland. Even if America needed to double the budget of the territorial control plan to get Haiti under control it would be worth it.
Logistically, the U.S. has the capacity to make this work. Our government already flies deportees to El Salvador—why not redirect those resources to support a Haiti operation? We could redirect funding from foreign aid programs outside of our hemisphere and we can even fund the construction of another CECOT. For those unaware Bukele’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), below, composed the core of his mission to rid El Salvador of its gang violence.
To reiterate yet again: my proposal is not one of charity but of national and regional security interest. A stable Haiti reduces migration pressures on U.S. borders and curbs the flow of illegal arms and would eventually allow the possibility of voluntary repatriation. El Salvador’s president says that 62% of Salvadoran diaspora in the United States want to return to the now safe and prosperous country, I see no reason Haiti’s diaspora can’t eventually have a similar desire.
Time is running out. The longer Haiti festers, the harder it becomes to salvage. Bukele’s offer isn’t just a lifeline—it’s a blueprint that’s already succeeded where others have failed. The U.S. should seize this chance, back it with resources, and let Bukele’s policies go into effect to do what the current mission cannot: restore order. Haiti deserves a fighting chance, and Bukele, with American support, might just deliver it.
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"To reiterate yet again: my proposal is not one of charity but of national and regional security interest"
Being charitable doesn't make it a bad thing, you know. But hey, two for one, who can argue?
This sounds fantastic. I think this must be contingent on a multi-phase repatriation program.
1. An initial deposit over every TPS person flown, bused and shipped into Our heartland must immediately go. The should be given eligibility for a stipend to be conscripted into Bukele's task force and trained to police. They came here to flee their country. This will give them a chance to perform their patriotic duties to their homeland.
2. All US businesses employing Haitians, this includes Uber and Lyft, will be fined huge sums for paying Haitians to work.
3. Once the prison compounds are built and some percentage of the gangs in prison, a full repatriation of the Haitian diaspora in the US must commence. They will be helped and given a subsidy to help recover their neighborhoods.
4. Haiti's sole billionaire, Gilbert Bigio, a known international arms dealer and who uses Haiti as a money laundering center, should have his accounts frozen and his wealth given to the Bukele effort to clean up Haiti. Bigio's family has been there since 1896 and he has done nothing to help turn it into anything other than an oligarch's money laundering, a gangster's arms dealing paradise. 125 years of failure to perform a civic duty and instead use that cesspool for self gain at the neighborhood's expense is long enough.
I am sure there is more. The bottom line is, the Haitians have to go. They do not belong here. They belong in Haiti where they spilled a lot of blood 200 plus years ago to clear the way for their self rule. It is time that they get on the path to Wakanda and if Bigio is in their way, then let's clear him out along with the petty gangsters he shares the island with.
I love the idea of enlisting Bukele to begin the process of clearing and holding and making it so El Salvadorans and other Latin Americans, who love their homeland above all else as told by the flags they fly in our country, can return to enjoy and build their countries. In their absence, blacks in America from the slavery era can be given the employment opportunities they are now paid to not perform so immigrants can. This would include the government sinecures that have drained our wealth. They need constructive work and mass repatriation will give them that opportunity. This would be a winner for everyone.
Bigio's wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Bigio