U.S. evacuating Americans from Haiti as humanitarian crisis worsens

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The U.S. government this week began airlifting stranded Americans out of the Haitian capital, as the gang violence racking this city showed no signs of abating and an already dire humanitarian crisis worsened. It is uncertain how long the airlifts will last.

The first government-organized helicopter flight out of Port-au-Prince departed Wednesday, carrying more than 15 U.S. citizens, a State Department spokesperson said, and an estimated 30 Americans will be able to leave on the flights each day that they operate.

They’re being taken to the neighboring Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. Officials said those who are airlifted out will be responsible for organizing their onward travel from the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo to the United States.

The U.S. government over the weekend flew more than 30 citizens from Cap-Haïtien, a city on Haiti’s northern coast, to Miami International Airport. The State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under conditions set by the agency, said they “continue to explore options” for departures from the city.

“The overall security situation, availability and reliability of commercial transportation, and U.S. citizen demand will all influence the duration of this departure assistance,” the official said.

The State Department has since 2020 advised Americans to not travel to Haiti, and had long urged those in the country to leave while commercial means were available.

Those options effectively evaporated this month after heavily armed gangs attacked the main airport here, shutting it down and locking out Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who was returning from Nairobi to finalize a deal for a U.N.-approved, Kenyan-led international police force for Haiti.

The embattled Henry said last week that he would resign once a transitional presidential council and interim prime minister are named. But there has not yet been a final agreement on who will make up the panel, which is tasked with leading the country to elections.

As the violence has intensified, several embassies and international institutions have reduced their footprints, evacuating personnel to the Dominican Republic. Few countries are evacuating other citizens. Several U.S. lawmakers have organized flights for their own constituents.

State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters Wednesday that while the U.S. government is “relieved when any American citizen” makes it out safely, operations organized outside of the agency “can be high-risk.”

He said nearly 1,000 Americans have registered with the U.S. Embassy in Haiti, but stressed that not everyone who has done so is necessarily seeking departure assistance.

In recent days, armed gangs, which control 80 percent of the capital, have targeted Haiti’s central bank in an attack that the country’s outgunned police forces managed to repel, and the wealthy neighborhood of Petionville in the hills above the city.

Armed groups, which have filled a power vacuum left after the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, have blocked the main roads leading out of Port-au-Prince and taken control of some ports, making travel by land or sea impossible or fraught with risk.

More than 362,000 people in Haiti have been displaced by gang violence in recent years. The International Organization for Migration observed almost 17,000 people fleeing Port-au-Prince from March 8 to March 14, most of them heading south.

“Many of these are families,” Ulrika Richardson, the United Nations’ resident and humanitarian coordinator for Haiti, told reporters Thursday. “They’ve had to flee multiple times. The level of trauma, fatigue and suffering among these families is extremely alarming, and it’s very, very painful.”

Jean-Martin Bauer, the World Food Program’s representative here, said “the needs in Haiti are very high,” but violence has prevented staff from reaching some of the most desperate places, including the neighborhood of Carrefour, where thousands have been displaced.

Staff are continuing to work, but fear for their safety, he told the Washington Post. Nearly half of the people in this country of 11 million face acute food insecurity.

“You have all the ingredients of a major crisis,” Bauer said. “Time is running out.”

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John Hudson in Washington contributed to this report.