Haitian gangs and individuals financing and arming them could soon find themselves labeled as “terrorists” and imprisoned in El Salvador’s notorious maximum-security prison, the same facility the Trump administration has been sending alleged members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, the Miami Herald has learned.
The U.S. State Department, which earlier this year designated the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and seven other criminal groups as foreign terrorist organizations, is working on issuing the same designation, or a less severe category — “specially designated global terrorist”— to leaders and members of Haiti’s powerful Viv Ansanm gang coalition, and the Gran Grif armed group operating in the country’s rural Artibonite region.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who spent a significant amount of time speaking with Caribbean leaders about Haiti’s deepening instability during a visit last month to Jamaica, believes that the ongoing violence, which has left 1 million Haitians one step away from famine and more than a million internally displaced, is both a threat to regional security and U.S. interests. The terrorist designation would extend U.S. jurisdiction to anyone assisting the gangs, from gun and ammunition traffickers to government officials in Haiti financing the groups. Anyone found guilty of assisting the gangs would be regarded as “terrorists” and face harsher penalties, including counterterrorism sanctions.
“For too long the enablers of Haiti’s brutal gangs, in the U.S., Colombia and elsewhere have gotten away with impunity, but they will now be faced with the criminal consequences of providing materiel support to terrorism,” a senior State Department official told the Herald. “This includes scenarios where Haitian gang leaders and members could end up at CECOT, alongside fellow designated terrorists from MS-13 and Tren de Aragua.”
CECOT is the Spanish acronym for El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, the largest maximum-security prison in Latin America.
The Central American country is currently among a handful of nations fielding soldiers and police officers to help the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission battle gangs in Haiti. While El Salvador reportedly wants to do more to help Haiti dismantle gangs currently pushing the country toward becoming a narco-trafficking state, any transfer of Haitian nationals to CECOT, where prisoners are packed by the hundreds into gigantic stainless steel cells, would need to be approved by Haiti’s justice ministry.
Several Haitian gang leaders are already facing federal criminal charges in the U.S. for the kidnapping of U.S. citizens in Haiti and are wanted by the FBI. Though their capture could lead to their being prosecuted in the U.S., another possibility, a knowledgeable source told the Herald, involves following the playbook involving MS-13 gang members arrested in Virginia: Drop the federal charges so they can quickly be deported to the CECOT prison in El Salvador.
The State Department’s terrorist designation would be a change in U.S. policy toward Haiti. Under the Biden administration, officials steered away from labeling gangs as terrorists even when they opened fire in November on three U.S. jetliners flying over Port-au-Prince. Instead, the State Department relied on visa cancellations and sanctions from the Treasury Department and the United Nations of gang leaders and the Haitian politicians and businessmen accused of financing them.
But despite the multiple sanctions, the gangs have grown stronger, ambushing and attacking police and soldiers, firing on U.S. Embassy vehicles and forcing Haitians, as recently as Thursday night, to flee their burning homes.
The gangs’ expanded sphere of influence and terror now includes three of the country’s 10 regional departments, and their tightened grip on the capital, Port-au-Prince, is threatening its imminent fall.
The escalating violence and the inability of Haiti’s transitional government, national police and the international force to stem the deadly siege led the Caribbean Community, the State Department and the governments of France and the United Kingdom to issue warnings this week against any plans by gangs and their allies to overthrow the government.
Mixed reaction
The possibility of a foreign terrorist designation for gangs gets mixed reactions in Haiti. On one hand, some lawyers have been signing a Change.org petition asking the Port-au-Prince Bar Association to ask the Haitian government to declare Viv Ansanm a terrorist group. On the other, members of the transitional government have been reluctant to do so, or even to push the U.S. for the designation, over concerns it could have significant implications for insurance policies, banking regulations and investments.
“Countries don’t want … gangs within the country to be designated as terrorists because that’s scary,” said Barbara Llanes, a former prosecutor at the U.S. Justice Department who is an and expert on sanctions and international law. “That makes it hard for the country to get financing, to get support from other countries, to get tourism, if the country has tourism. So the terrorist designation also carry with it some domestic risks.”
Those pushing for a stronger response to the gang crisis see the benefits of a terrorist designation, arguing that the description of Haiti’s armed groups as simply “gangs” means the international response is limited to law enforcement actions. There have been calls in the past for the gangs to be designated as “insurgents,” while earlier this year a group of Haitian politicians and a Haitian security firm separately argued for the foreign terrorist designation.
The Port-au-Prince-based Halo Solutions Firm, which provides regular security updates and analysis on the gang violence, said the designation would allow U.S. agencies to take more aggressive counterterrorism measures. That includes imposing sanctions and going after anyone who provides materiel support, much like efforts targeting Mexican cartels. In a recent report, the security firm highlighted how one group in particular, the 5 Segond/UVD gang, has demonstrated its ability to destabilize Haiti, threaten U.S. interests and expand its operations across international borders.
The gang’s leader, Johnson “Izo” Andre, has been sanctioned by the U.S. and was recently charged by the Justice Department with the kidnapping of an American citizen. He reportedly came close to capture during an operation Wednesday by the Kenyan mission.
“Failing to designate them as a Foreign Terrorist Organization will only allow their power and influence to grow unchecked, further exacerbating Haiti’s crisis and its impact on the United States,” the Halo security report said.
At least 1,700 Haitians have died this year— a figure higher than at this time last year — in gang-related attacks, according to the U.N. human rights office. Thirteen Haitian police officers, including one whose body was never recovered, have also been killed, according to Haiti’s National Human Rights Defense Network.
Two members of the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission were also killed by members of the Gran Grif gang after it ambushed security forces in the Artibonite region, north of Port-au-Prince.
In January, before Rubio designated the Tren de Aragua gang as a foreign terrorist organization and the administration began garnering headlines over its controversial decision to send 200 Venezuelans to the El Salvador prison without due process, several Haitian political leaders sent a three-page letter to the secretary asking for Viv Ansanm to be designated.
“The activities of the gangs harm not only Haitians but the security of the entire region,” the letter said. “If the gangs executed 5,600 people in 2024, if 1,045,000 Haitians have been displaced as a result of their criminal action … the United States has an interest in considering the Viv Ansanm gangs as a terrorist organization.”
The letter was signed by five Haitian politicians, including former Prime Minister Claude Joseph and lawyer Andre Michel, who belongs to a civil society group known as the December 21 Coalition. Joseph is the founder of the EDE political party.
The letter suggested that Rubio could use the Patriot Act, which was enacted after the 9/11 attacks and gave the president expanded powers to target, detain and deport immigrants in the U.S. suspected of terrorist activity. Trump, however, has instead relied on the centuries-old Alien Enemies Act to target Tren de Aragua.
Designation of a group as a foreign terrorist organization gives the U.S. government “additional tools in terms of their ability to investigate, prosecute these groups for very serious, grave offenses that carry very serious penalties to pursue action beyond U.S. borders,” said Llanes, now a Miami lawyer defending individuals accused of white-collar crimes. “But what we are seeing with this administration in the example of Tren de Aragua is they are taking it completely to a different level.”
Individuals designated by the administration as Tren de Aragua members are being “deported to prisons that are essentially concentration camps” because they are not U.S. citizens, she said.
Using the Alien Enemies Act, Llanes said, the Trump administration “is trying to create a gray area with what they can do with members” foreign terrorist organizations.
“There’s a lot of questions about the implications for people who are caught up in that — facilitators, enablers, can potentially be a part of that,” she said, adding that many of her clients in Latin America and Mexico are concerned about facing an investigation or prosecution due to accusations of enabling or supporting a designated foreign terrorist organization.
The U.S. designation would follow that of the Dominican Republic. In February, President Luis Abainader, whose nation shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, designated 26 Haitian gangs as “terrorist organizations,” warning that if any members of the group entered Dominican territory, they would be prosecuted, arrested and tried under the new anti-terrorism law. He also criticized the international community for a weak and slow response.
The move got mixed reviews in diplomatic circles, as critics worried it could be used as an excuse for the country to invade Haiti.
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