Gangs gain the upper hand in war with Haitian police
Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) — The rounds bounced off the armored vehicle, as police carried a limp civilian to the sidewalk -- another victim of the brutal, daily shootings that plague the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince and the surrounding area. Here, inside the gang-held territory of Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti's SWAT team has driven into a gunfight that has already torn up a civilian bus.
"Can you see where it came from?" the SWAT members breathlessly asked each other inside the armored vehicle. It provides only a tiny sliver of a window onto the streets outside, which at one moment appear deserted, the next teeming with civilians trying to flee to safety.
In the past 72 hours, police have killed a leader of the 400 Mawozo gang and rescued six hostages from them, they say. But the gang - one of dozens terrorizing the capital - have not been dislodged from these streets.
"Can you see that red sign 'SMS'? That's them," said a SWAT officer, indicating the gunmen's position. Like his team, he did not want to be named, citing their safety. He pointed down the road towards a small shack, as dozens of people flooded from a side-alley into the street.
"Get away," he said to the crowd, over the armored car's loudspeaker. "You're too exposed. It's dangerous."
The officer ordered the vehicle to move into a new position. "When we get to the spot, open up on anything that moves," he said. Heavy gunfire between police and gang members followed.
It is a common scene of injury, gunfire and panic in one of the dozens of neighborhoods controlled by gangs as Port-au-Prince appears to descend into a full-blown war between police and increasingly well-equipped and organized criminal groups.
And this is a familiar routine: Police probe into gang areas to show their reach, and gangs respond with intense volleys of bullets.
In the area of Cité Soleil, ten days of violence in July left more than 470 people dead, injured or missing, according to the UN, after the G9 gang tried to expand its reach in the area, taking territory from rival gangs.
Social media video from inside the area shows gangs using a bulldozer covered with steel plates to act as armor demolishing homes, presumably those of rivals. Other houses had been burned, with other video showing dozens of locals fleeing the area on foot at night, during the peak of the fighting.
Civilians who fled Cité Soleil found little respite, with dozens receiving food handouts from the World Food Programme and sheltering in the open air of the Hugo Chavez recreational park.
Flies blanket the rain-sodden concrete floor of the sporting amphitheater stage, where children as young as four months struggle to sleep, exposed to the elements. One has bruises from a fall, another a painful and ugly rash, but they are alive.
Here, Natalie Aristel angrily shows us her new, unpalatable home.
"Here's where I sleep in a puddle," she said, pointing at the water. "They burned my house and shot my husband seven times," she says, referring to gang members.
"I can't even afford to go see him [in hospital]. In this park, even if they brought some food, there's never enough for everyone. The kids are dying."
Others are missing. "I have four kids, but my first is missing and I can't find him," another woman said. "We've been totally abandoned by the state and have to pay to even use a toilet," another added.
A young boy added: "My mother and father have died. My aunt saved me. I want to go to school but it was torn down."
Locals speak of a perfect storm of calamities -- and warn the country increasingly feels on the verge of societal collapse.
People in this neighborhood built a wall on a public road last month to keep out gangs who were kidnapping residents for ransoms.
What remains of the country's emergency interim government, created last year after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, is beginning to crumble and steeped in accusations of inactivity. His successor, Prime Minister Ariel Henry, has pledged to combat insecurity and hold new elections, but so far shown little progress toward either goal.
Meanwhile, analysts calculate inflation in the country at 30%. Gas is scarce and the subject of angry queues at stations. The UN has warned gang violence may put the youngest children in areas of active fighting at risk of imminent starvation, as their parents cannot access food or go to work.
One Haitian security forces source speaking to CNN estimated that gangs control or influence three quarters of the city.
Frantz Elbe, Director General of the Haitian National Police, rejects the assertion. "It is not a general problem in the metropolitan area," he told CNN, declining to give a percentage.
Yet it is indisputable that vital parts of the national infrastructure are now entirely in criminal hands. The city's vital port -- Haiti's main -- is controlled by gangs, who dominate the road outside. So is the main highway to the country's south, which means the fragile part of the country that was hit by an earthquake last year has been effectively cut off from the capital. Gangs are also expanding their control in the city's east, where Croix-des-Bouquets lies, and in the north, around Cité Soleil, observers said.
Kidnappings are rampant and indiscriminate -- one of few thriving industries in Haiti. Seventeen American and Canadian missionaries were kidnapped last year after visiting an orphanage in Croix-des-Bouquets, and only released after a ransom was paid to the 400 Mawozo gang.
Police, often outgunned, are doing what they can, Elbe tells CNN.
"The gangs are changing the way they fight. It used to be with knives, and now it is with big weapons. The police need to be well-equipped. With the little we have, we will do what we can to fight the gang members," he said.
The challenge they face is exposed by a brief checkpoint set up in Croix-des-Bouquets, where a truck has been dragged across a main road by the gangs, and torched.
Police bring in an armored military bulldozer to push the wreckage to the roadside, which is already littered with other truck carcasses. The bulldozer operator, asked if he works under fire, replies: "Often."
SWAT police set up a perimeter, scanning nearby rooftops. Locals and the vehicles they travel in are stopped and checked. One man says the situation is "bad, very bad," before another gives him a stern glance.
He suddenly changes tone: "We know nothing."
Fear is the currency of this war, though it is unclear if he fears speaking to the press, or the police, or what the gang may learn he said later.
To flee this fear, however, requires enduring more. A short boat journey from the mainland is the island of La Gonave, a hub for human traffickers.
The lackadaisical tempo and blue water of one tiny inlet on La Gonave belies its poverty. Heat, trash, hunger and the business of leaving dominate this world.
One, a smuggler who introduced himself as Johnny, calmly explained how his business works.
The journey is often one-way for the boat, so each endeavor requires the boat to be bought outright, at a cost of about US $10,000, he says. To cover that cost, Johnny needs at least two hundred customers, who will huddle in its disheveled hull.
Shreds of netting appear to plug any gaps between in the hull, and loose wooden planks will make up the boat's interior. Johnny shows where the pump and motors will eventually go.
"If we die, we die. If we make it, we make it," he said.
He added he hoped to pack his boat with 250 passengers, as he considered it in "good" condition.
The ultimate destination is the United States, with Cuba and the Turks and Caicos islands sometimes accidental stops along the way.
And it is from these three places that the International Organization for Migration has reported surging numbers of forced repatriations of Haitians in the first seven months of this year, with 20,016 so far, compared to 19,629 for all of 2021.
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National Center of Haitian Apostolate
TWENTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (Aug. 14, 2022)
Jer. 38, 4-6. 8-10; Heb. 12, 1-4; Lk. 12, 49-54
Msgr. Pierre André Pierre
Jesus, the Prince of peace, constantly calls his followers to reconciliation, forgiveness, and the victory of peace. Today surprisingly we hear him saying that He came to bring division. Is there a contradiction?
Jesus is not contradicting himself. He is simply warning us that many people will violently reject the truth of His Gospel. The call to repentance will be welcomed by some but will infuriate those rooted in evil ways. Jesus went on to compare His message to a cleansing fire that purifies sinners and produces newness in individual hearts and in society at large. Yet it will be a disturbing message to the wicked.
This message will have the good effect of raising us from sleep. Some of us tend to be tepid and cowardly. The Gospel of Jesus is something that demands determined and courageous disciples quite capable to stand in front of opposition and suffering. The true believer will not allow himself to be surprised or discouraged by the hostility unleashed by the “enemies of the Cross.”
The example of Prophet Jeremiah in the 1st reading illustrates the theme. He was thrown into a muddy pit by his enemies but ultimately rescued. In the 2nd reading, Saint Paul asks us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus who endured tremendous sufferings in the hands of sinners but ultimately rose from the dead.
The lesson for all of us is this: As his disciples of Jesus, we must expect to endure hardships without ever “growing weary and losing heart.” We have to run with perseverance the race we have started, with our eyes fixed on our goal, Jesus.
US to issue ID to migrants awaiting deportation proceedings
August 6, 2022 / 11:37 AM
By CBS Miami Team
MIAMI - U.S. immigration authorities are planning to issue photo ID cards to immigrants in deportation proceedings in a bid to slash paper use and help people stay up-to-date on required meetings and court hearings, officials said.
The proposal from Immigration and Customs Enforcement is still being developed as a pilot program, and it was not immediately clear how many the agency would issue. The cards would not be an official form of federal identification, and would state they are to be used by the Department of Homeland Security.
The idea is for immigrants to be able to access information about their cases online by using a card rather than paper documents that are cumbersome and can fade over time, officials said. They said ICE officers could also run checks on the cards in the field.
"Moving to a secure card will save the agency millions, free up resources, and ensure information is quickly accessible to DHS officials while reducing the agency's FOIA backlog," an ICE spokesperson said in a statement, referring to unfulfilled public requests for agency documents. Homeland Security gets more Freedom of Information Act requests than any other federal agency, according to government data, and many of those involve immigration records.
The proposal has sparked a flurry of questions about what the card might be used for and how secure it would be. Some fear the program could lead to tracking of immigrants awaiting their day in immigration court, while others suggest the cards could advertised by migrant smugglers to try to induce others to make the dangerous trip north.
The Biden administration is seeking $10 million for the so-called ICE Secure Docket Card in a budget proposal for the next fiscal year. It was not immediately clear if the money would cover the pilot or a broader program or when it would begin.
The administration has faced pressure as the number of migrants seeking to enter the country on the southwest border has increased. Border Patrol agents stopped migrants more than 1.1 million times from January to June, up nearly one-third from the same period of an already-high 2021.
Many migrants are turned away under COVID-19-related restrictions. But many are allowed in and either are detained while their cases churn through the immigration courts or are released and required to check in periodically with ICE officers until a judge rules on their cases.
Those most likely to be released in the United States are from countries where expulsion under the public health order is complicated due to costs, logistics or strained diplomatic relations, including Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
At shelters, bus stations and airports along the U.S.-Mexico border, migrants carefully guard their papers in plastic folders. These are often the only documents they have to get past airport checkpoints to their final destinations in the United States. The often dog-eared papers can be critical to getting around.
An immigration case can take years and the system can be confusing, especially for immigrants who know little English and may need to work with an array of government agencies, including ICE and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which issues work permits and green cards. U.S. immigration courts are overseen by the Justice Department.
Gregory Z. Chen, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said migrants have mistakenly gone to ICE offices instead of court for scheduled hearings that they then missed as a result. He said so long as immigrants' privacy is protected, the card could be helpful.
"If ICE is going to be using this new technology to enable non citizens to check in with ICE, or to report information about their location and address, and then to receive information about their case - where their court hearings might be, what the requirements might be for them to comply with the law - that would be a welcome approach," Chen said.
It was not clear whether Homeland Security's Transportation Security Administration would accept the cards for airport travel or whether private businesses would consider it valid.
The United States doesn't have a national photo identification card. Residents instead use a range of cards to prove identification, including driver's licenses, state ID cards and consular ID cards. What constitutes a valid ID is often determined by the entity seeking to verify a person's identity.
Talia Inlender, deputy director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at University of California, Los Angeles' law school, said she was skeptical that using a card to access electronic documents would simplify the process for immigrants, especially those navigating the system without a lawyer, and questioned whether the card has technology that could be used to increase government surveillance of migrants.
But having an ID could be useful, especially for migrants who need to travel within the U.S., Inlender said.
"Many people are fleeing persecution and torture in their countries. They're not showing up with government paperwork," Inlender said. "Having a form of identification to be able to move throughout daily life has the potential to be a helpful thing."
That has some Republican lawmakers concerned that the cards could induce more migrants to come to the U.S. or seek to access benefits they're not eligible for. A group of 16 lawmakers sent a letter last week to ICE raising questions about the plan.
"The Administration is now reportedly planning yet another reckless policy that will further exacerbate this ongoing crisis," the letter said.
The CBS Miami team is a group of experienced journalists who bring you the content on CBSMiami.com.
First published on August 6, 2022 / 11:37 AM
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