Haiti is spiralling deeper into violence, cruelty and chaos as the state loses control to hundreds of armed gangs. Donald Trump’s deportation plans could make things worse.
A spiral of cruelty and chaos
Last Saturday, in a low-key ceremony inside a heavily fortified building in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s transitional presidential council handed power to prime minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé. The prime minister is now the only politician with executive power in a country that has been spiralling downwards into chaos for the past five years.
Armed gangs control almost 90 per cent of the capital and violence has spread to other parts of the country, diminishing the state’s capacity to deliver basic services. More than one in 10 Haitians have fled their homes because of gang violence, which includes rape and kidnappings as well as more than 8,000 killings last year.
The violence forced more than 1,600 schools to close in the 2024-2025 academic year, leaving 1.5 million children without access to education. Nearly half of all Haitians face acute food insecurity, including 1.2 million children under the age of five.
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The United Nations Security Council last October approved the deployment of a new armed international mission, the Gang Suppression Force (GSF) in an effort to regain control of territory from the gangs so that elections can take place. But the force will not be fully deployed until April so it is unlikely that the security situation will have improved enough in time for the elections to be held as scheduled at the end of August.
Haiti has not had an election for a decade and it has been without a president since the last incumbent, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in 2021. The nine-member transitional presidential council was established in 2024 as the top executive body after Ariel Henry, the prime minister appointed by Moïse, lost control.
The council was supposed to facilitate the holding of elections and was authorised to exercise presidential powers until an elected president was inaugurated or on February 7th, 2026, whichever came earlier. As the armed gangs gained more control of the country, the election was postponed but some members of the council were reluctant to pass control to Fils-Aimé.
The United States threw its weight behind the prime minister, sanctioning four members of the council and deploying a warship and two coast guard vessels to waters near Port-au-Prince in the days before the handover.
“The US Navy and US Coast Guard reaffirm their partnership and support to ensure a safer and more prosperous Haiti,” the American embassy in Port-au-Prince said.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is trying to remove from Haitians in the US the temporary protected status that has prevented them being deported back to the country since the 2010 earthquake that destroyed much of Port-au-Prince and killed hundreds of thousands of people. Removing the protection status could have a devastating impact on Haiti, where the money emigrants send home accounts for 16 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.
Transitional presidential council member Leslie Voltaire told Fox News last week that the return of up to 400,000 people would leave Haiti helpless.
“There are no jobs because there is no investment right now. There is no investment because there is insecurity. And also we have to provide services to the population so there is a huge need of cash,” he said.
A federal judge last week temporarily blocked the administration’s move, suggesting that homeland security secretary Kristi Noem was targeting Haitians because they are black.
“Plaintiffs charge that secretary Noem preordained her termination decision and did so because of hostility to non-white immigrants. This seems substantially likely,” judge Ana Reyes said.
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