ROME — The president of Haiti’s transitional presidential council said the Trump administration’s decisions to freeze aid programs, deport migrants and block refugees will be “catastrophic” for Haiti.
Leslie Voltaire made the comment in an interview with the Associated Press in Rome on Saturday following a meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican. He visited the pope to ask for help for Haiti.
“I’m knocking on the doors of people who love Haiti. The pope loves Haiti, and he is eager to help,” Haiti’s interim president said.
The pontiff and Voltaire discussed the dire situation in Haiti, where gangs have killed civilians and operate across the Caribbean nation with impunity. Half of Haiti’s 11.4 million people are already hungry, according to Voltaire, and losing humanitarian assistance will make the situation dramatically worse.
“Trump said that Haiti is a ‘shithole,’ so I don’t think he will care about Haiti,” Voltaire said, referring to denigrating comments Trump made in 2018. Voltaire noted that thousands of people are already being repatriated from the Dominican Republic every week and gangs are terrorizing the populace. With the new U.S. policies, “the situation will be catastrophic.”
During his first administration, President Trump used bluntly vulgar language in a closed-door meeting, according to several people present, to question why the U.S. would accept immigrants from Haiti and “shithole countries” in Africa. At the time, the White House did not deny his remark but issued a statement saying Trump supported immigration policies that welcome “those who can contribute to our society.”
Voltaire said there are roughly 1.5 million Haitians in the United States and about 150,000 who were accepted under a program called Temporary Protected Status.
“Trump says that he will expel all of them,” Voltaire said, adding that Haiti, which is already struggling with hunger and internally displaced people, cannot handle the influx.
In a report released this month, the United Nations migration agency said internal displacement within Haiti has tripled over the last year and now surpasses 1 million people. The situation has been largely caused by gang violence in the Caribbean country. The new figure provided by the International Organization for Migration represents a record for Haiti.
The organization said that “relentless gang violence” in Port-au-Prince has fueled a near-doubling of displacement in the capital city and a collapse of healthcare and other services and worsening food insecurity. About 200,000 people have been forcibly returned to Haiti over the last year, mostly from the Dominican Republic, with which Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola.
Voltaire and his transitional government have been tasked with leading the country to general elections, an elusive goal, but he is convinced they can make it happen by November despite powerful gangs that rule 85% of the capital and are gaining ground in surrounding areas.
Voltaire says he feels certain that if Haiti’s multinational police force is boosted with several thousand additional officers, elections will take place this year.
Kenya is leading the multinational police force with a total deployment of more than 600, though fewer than the 1,000 officers the country’s president pledged. An additional 150 Guatemalans and an advance team of eight Salvadoran troops have also arrived, but the force remains far below its anticipated strength of 2,500 officers. Voltaire said Benin has pledged an additional 2,000 soldiers.
The power of gangs in Haiti has grown since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise. Some gangs have even indicated they want to be part of the political process. Voltaire excluded that possibility. “I don’t think they should be around the table. I think they are criminals.”
More than 5,600 people were reported killed across Haiti last year, according to the United Nations. The number of killings increased by more than 20% compared with all of 2023, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office.
This month, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned that gangs could soon could overrun Port-au-Prince, leading to a complete breakdown of government authority without additional international support for the beleaguered national police.
Voltaire said he asked Francis to organize an international conference of solidarity for Haiti. The pope wrote “international conference” on a sheet of paper, Voltaire said, and later the Vatican secretary of state, Pietro Parolin, told him the Vatican would try to persuade Mexico and Canada to participate in funding a conference on Haiti.
Thomas writes for the Associated Press.