The US envoy to Haiti has resigned after just two months in the role, in protest at what he called the Biden administration’s “inhumane” mass deportation of Haitian migrants and asylum-seekers to what he said was a highly dangerous “collapsed state”.
Daniel Foote’s angry resignation letter is a serious blow for an administration which came to office promising a more humane approach to immigration in the wake of Donald Trump’s policy of child separation. But it has been overwhelmed by a surge of Haitian migrants and refugees fleeing the implosion of the country’s society after the assassination in July of its president, Jovenel Moïse, triggered chaos that was then compounded by a powerful earthquake in August.
Foote, who has previously served as deputy chief of mission in Haiti and ambassador in Zambia, was appointed special envoy after Moïse’s killing, which remains unsolved.
After some 14,000 migrants gathered in an impromptu camp under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) bureau started flying hundreds out on multiple flights every day, without the opportunity for asylum appeals or hearings.
“I will not be associated with the United States’ inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs to daily life,” Foote said in his letter to the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, that was leaked on Thursday.
“Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my policy recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.”
http://globalreportage.org/2021/09/23/daniel-boote-u-s-special-envoy-to-haiti-resigns-over-inhumane-decision-to-deport-haitian-migrants/
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