The president of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council, Leslie Voltaire, greeted 70 police officers from Guatemala and El Salvador at the airport in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday.
The Salvadorans will join roughly 800 foreign police attempting to retake control of Haiti’s capital from vicious street gangs.
The eight Salvadoran officers who arrived in Haiti on Tuesday are reportedly specialists in air support, especially for medical evacuations. Their deployment was authorized in October by President Nayib Bukele.
The ostensibly multinational peacekeeping force in Haiti has largely consisted of police officers from Kenya until now. The Kenyan deployment began in June 2024, after being delayed by legal challenges from Kenyan opposition politicians who said President William Ruto had no authority to deploy the police on foreign soil.
A contingent of 144 additional Kenyan officers arrived in Haiti on Thursday. The force is still much smaller than envisioned by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) when it authorized the multinational mission to Haiti in October 2023. The latest deployments brought the multinational force up to around 1,000 members, while UNSC said stabilizing Haiti would require at least 2,500 foreign troops.
Haiti was plunged into chaos after President Jovenel Moise was assassinated at his home in July 2021. Heavily armed gangs have taken over much of Port-au-Prince, as well as sending goon squads to take control of vital farmland in the rest of the country.
Thousands of civilians have been displaced by gang violence, adding a massive refugee crisis to Haiti’s many woes. Gunmen murdered at least 40 civilians in just the past few days.
U.N. officials said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s 90-day pause on foreign aid interrupted over $13 million in U.S. funding pledged to the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission in Haiti. The MSS is not an official U.N. intervention, so it relies entirely upon voluntary contributions from U.N. member states.
“The U.S. had committed $15 million to the trust fund; $1.7 million of that had already been spent, so $13.3 million is now frozen. We received an official notification from the U.S. asking for an immediate stop work order on their contribution,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Tuesday.
The Kenyan foreign ministry was more optimistic, expressing confidence that “any freeze” in U.S. funding “would not impair our ability to continue with this mission.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday approved waivers for $40.7 million in continued funding for the Haitian National Police (HNP) and MSS. The U.S. also completed delivery of heavy armored equipment to the HNP and MSS on Tuesday.
After meeting with Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader on Thursday, Rubio said the MSS is still insufficient to the task of freeing Haiti from the gangs.
“That mission, the way it is currently constructed, will not be enough. It needs to find a new direction in order to be successful at rooting out these armed groups that today have taken possession of large portions of Haitian territory and endanger the lives of people and the stability of the region,” he said.
Rubio pointed out that the United Nations is “sitting on $100 million in their fund” for Haiti, which included $15 million from the United States, of which $12 million was frozen by Trump’s order.
“That means they still have $85 million plus the one point something million they spent that we already have in there available for the mission. That’s clear, and that’s not an impediment to the mission continuing beyond the U.N. fund,” he said.
“We will continue to support the mission,” he said. “The solution for Haiti is in the hands of the Haitian people, in the hands of the Haitian elite. But we will help. We can’t ignore the problems.”
The U.S. embassy in Haiti told the Miami Herald that the waivers signed by Rubio included funding for “logistical contracts to support forward operating bases, a vehicle-maintenance contract to support the security mission’s armored fleet, a medical-services contract for the Haiti National Police, transportation services for State Department equipment deliveries, and contracts that support experts with the Haiti National Police.”
According to the Miami Herald, some police advisers contracted to support the MSS and HNP by the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs have been let go after their contracts were canceled by the new administration. Other contractors who initially received stop-work orders have since returned to their missions.
Rubio spoke to Kenyan President William Ruto by phone during his meeting with Abinader and thanked him for supporting the mission to Haiti.
“It’s a credit to Kenya, who’s come halfway around the world and are willing to stand up and do something about it, when countries in our own hemisphere, they’re not willing to do anything about it,” Rubio said archly.
“I won’t go through and list all of them and start some diplomatic fight, my two-and-a half weeks into my term here. But I’m just telling you there’s some rich countries out there and they’re not doing nearly enough about it, and they could be doing more. So, I encourage them to do more,” he said.
“Haiti is drowning while a significant part of the international community is watching from the sidelines without showing the commitment that this serious situation requires,” Abinader agreed.
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