The penultimate crisis facing the Joe Biden Administration has been further complicated this Thursday with the resignation of the White House's special envoy for Haiti, Daniel Foote, who considers the expulsions of Haitian migrants who had been detained since "inhuman". days ago in the chaotic and improvised camp under the Del Río international bridge, which connects Ciudad Acuña (Coahuila, Mexico) with the State of Texas.
Foote was appointed to the post following the shooting assassination last July of the President of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse.
In addition to the assassination, the country suffered a devastating earthquake in August that caused almost 2,200 deaths and more than 12,000 injured, and generated a human crisis for more than half a million people.
The diplomat considers that the "collapsed state" of Haiti cannot also bear the return of deported migrants.
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In his resignation letter, dated Wednesday and presented to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Foote announces his immediate resignation "with profound disappointment."
“I will not allow myself to be associated with the inhumane and counterproductive decision of the United States to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are locked up in secure barracks due to the danger posed by armed gangs in Haiti. daily life ”, says the diplomat.
Foote considers Washington's intervention in Haiti ill-fated.
"Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed and my recommendations have been ignored and discarded, if not modified to project a different narrative from mine," he says.
Haiti is devastated by "poverty, crime, government corruption and lack of humanitarian resources," continues the official in his letter, which concludes that "a collapsed state cannot provide security or basic services, and the presence of more refugees will feed more despair and more crime ”.
As a final note, Foote warns that if more disasters occur in Haiti, they will have "dire" consequences, not only for that country "but for the United States and its neighbors in the hemisphere."
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Of the nearly 14,000 migrants who were counted last week in the settlement in the city of Del Rio (Texas), only half remain, as many have been detained or expelled on flights back to Haiti.
Others decided to cross the border again and settle in Mexico, to avoid being deported.
The stark images captured last week by the media that showed border agents on horseback chasing migrants who had crossed into the United States and trying to prevent them from accessing the precarious camp sparked a scandal that led the Department of Homeland Security to open an investigation.
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