U.S. Designates Haitian Gangs as Terrorist Organizations

The Trump administration designated Friday two Haitian gangs, the Viv Ansanm coalition and Gran Grief, as both Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists. In a press release, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the gangs’ “ultimate goal is creating a gang-controlled state where illicit trafficking and other criminal activities operate freely and terrorize Haitian citizens.”

The designation gives the government a wide range of options for penalizing financial transactions that benefit the gangs, which could include almost any activity in a country so thoroughly dominated by organized crime. Haitian gangs assassinated the last president of the Caribbean republic in 2021 and toppled the remains of the government in 2024; in the intervening months they have taken almost complete control of the countryside and are close to pushing out the UN mission occupying the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Gang rule has been brutal for Haitians, who are regularly subject to plundering, kidnappings for ransom, extortion, and all manner of violent crime. The UN reports that over 5,600 people were murdered and more than 1,500 people were kidnapped in 2024, an astonishing amount for a country with a population of only 11.6 million. Gang members routinely carry out mass rape and sexual violence, often as a form of retribution or a display of dominance against their rivals.

Domestic efforts to constrain the gangs have failed. The Haitian police forces, always encumbered by corruption and a lack of training, equipment, and professionalism, are now completely outnumbered and without a functional government to support them; they and their families are in constant danger from criminal elements. The Kenyan-led UN security mission, which was projected to provide an additional 2,500 police officers, contributes less than 1,000; it too is barely holding on in a small enclave in the capital, 80 percent of which is controlled by Viv Ansanm and another 10 percent by other gangs.

The criminal anarchy has plunged the already poor population into the depths of misery; business and normal economic activity is impossible to maintain in an environment of constant violence, and much of the population has been reduced to scavenging and dependence on international humanitarian aid for their continued subsistence. According to Action Against Hunger, about 1 million Haitians received food aid in the past year; many others have received other kinds of international assistance.

Haitian gangs have not been slow to turn international aid into another lucrative source of funding for themselves. Shipments of food and other aid must pass through gang-controlled territory to reach the needy population, and gangs charge significant tolls in return for safe passage. In an interview with Haiti’s Le Nouvelliste newspaper, Finance Minister Alfred Metellus stated that the gangs may derive as much as $75 million a year in revenue from tolls extorted from drivers transporting goods into Haiti from the Dominican Republic—$2000 for each cargo container.

So far, the international response has accomplished nothing but perpetuating the impossible situation Haiti finds itself in—providing only just enough additional force to prevent a complete takeover by gangs and the erection of a criminal government, while providing new sources of revenue for gang leaders in the form of international aid. The Biden administration seems to have determined to end the conflict by evacuating Haitians into the U.S. Hundreds of thousands entered the country during his term under the Immigration Parole Program, settling, among other places, in Springfield, Ohio, where they became a campaign issue in 2024.

The designation of Haitian gangs as terrorist organizations appears to signal that the Trump Administration is assembling a new strategy for dealing with Haiti, although it is not yet clear what that will be. The law imposes stiff penalties on anyone who provides “material support” or “resources” to designated groups. Anyone who sends money or other resources to Haiti that end up in the hands of the gangs not only risks facing criminal charges or being slapped with counter-terrorism sanctions, they may even face deportation.

The scope of the law is broad enough that it could apply to not only foreign funders of Haitian gangs, but also to international aid organizations that pay tolls to gang members to use their roads, or remittances sent home by Haitians that end up one way or another in the the hands of gangs. Because Haiti’s territory is so deeply infested with organized crime, the designation could function as a de facto embargo on commerce with the country.

Human rights watchdogs are concerned that the new approach “will have enormous chilling effects on the aid and lethal effects in Haiti where so much of the population is already starving,” and say that the Trump administration could use the designation as a tool to deport Haitians living in the United States.

A new approach towards the gang problems in Haiti is not only necessary but pressing. The international response has served only to prolong the crisis, which has been ongoing for close to a decade without resolution. The provision of humanitarian aid to starving Haitians, while noble in intent, has only empowered the gangs that are the source of their immiseration. Bringing Haitians to the U.S., as the Biden administration did, also does nothing to solve the problem, while actively harming Americans. A more muscular strategy that cracks down hard on gang funding and avoids potentially introducing foreign conflicts to the U.S. has the potential to serve both Haitians and Americans far better than the status quo.