President Joe Biden’s pro-migration administration is preparing for a huge migrant exodus from chaotic Haiti during his 2024 reelection campaign — and he may forcibly return migrants to their chaotic island.
“The driving conditions in Haiti could very well press more people [to migrate],” Rebecca Zimmerman, a senior Pentagon official responsible for homeland defense, told the House Armed Services Committee on March 12e. “We’ve recently approved some additional assistance that we can provide to the Coast Guard,” she told Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) on Tuesday.
“I think that we need to be postured appropriately for that,” echoed Gen. Laura Richardson, commander of U.S. Southern Command, which is responsible for conducting homeland defense. “I have put in a request for increased capability to do exactly that … we are ready if we need to deal with a mass migration,” she added.
The New York Post printed an email leaked from border agents in Miami, Fla., warning that federal officials may not try to return migrants who sail into U.S. coastal waters on small, sail-powered freighters.
“The Coast Guard may not be stopping Haitian sail freighter[s],” the email said. “They will just be escorting them into land [ports].”
“With the breakdown of the government in Haiti[,] repatriating Haitians may not be happening for the foreseeable future,” the email said.
Biden’s deputies — including border chief Alejandro Mayorkas — can be very tough on migrants when it suits their purposes.
In September 2021, roughly 30,000 migrants crossed the border river into Del Rio, Texas. The resulting crisis was displayed on the evening news, and it damaged Biden’s poll ratings despite Mayorkas’ willingness to let border agents be tarred as whip-lashing racists.
In response, Mayorkas suppressed the drama — and deterred future invasions — by flying more than 20,000 Haitians back to the island’s poverty.
The quick return was shocking for many Haitians. Some of the returned Haitian migrants had left Haiti many years earlier to live in Chile and other South American countries. Many did not know they were being sent to Haiti until their aircraft landed at the island’s airport.
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Pro-migration groups were appalled, but they accepted the deportations as the political price of Biden’s new pro-migration policies. “A tragic milestone: 20,000th migrant deported to Haiti since Biden inauguration,” said a report from WOLA.org.
Many Democrats also wish to avoid a recurrence of the migrant chaos that nearly ended then-Governor Bill Clinton’s political career in Arkansas in June 1980. The Washington Post described the 1980 crisis when Cuban migrants walked off a military base in Arkansas where they were being screened:
A riot erupted at the fort; 1,000 Cubans fled past troops, who did little to stop them. The Cubans began walking down a highway to the closest town, which was filled with “several hundred angry and armed Arkansans,” as Clinton put it, with state troopers the governor’s only muscle to prevent chaos. After some of the Cubans started throwing rocks, Clinton feared “a bloodbath that would make the Little Rock Central High crisis look like a Sunday afternoon picnic.”
Fortunately, the Cubans retreated when troopers fired warning shots. Sixty-two people were injured and three buildings at Fort Chaffee were destroyed, but no one died.
But it is also true that Mayorkas strongly favors migrants and migration, regardless of the damage done to ordinary Americans or to the many migrants who die while trying to accept Mayorkas’ border invitation.
For example, he has said repeatedly that he supports “equity” for migrants, meaning he thinks they deserve the same legal rights as U.S. citizens. So in December 2022, Mayorkas provided “Temporary Legal Status” to 110,000 more Haitians who had sneaked into the United States since June 2021.
The December decision bumped up the illegal Haitian population with TPS to 250,000, or a quarter of a million, migrants.
The next month, Mayorkas created a legally contested “parole pathway” program for Haitians to move into the United States. Since then, he has moved more than 138,000 Haitians into Americans’ communities, workplaces, and homes via his open-ended “CNHV” parole program.
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Last week, the legally dubious program survived a court challenge when a judge said Texas and other states could not sue to block the program. The states cannot sue, the judge concluded, because the program does not cost their state governments more than it would pay if the Haitian migrants arrived illegally.
Mayorkas has repeatedly explained that he supports more migration because of his migrant parents, his sympathy for migrants, his support for “equity” between Americans and foreigners, and his willingness to put his priorities above the law.
Numerous polls that Americans oppose Mayorkas’ pro-migration policies — and that Biden’s reelection is endangered by the public’s growing opposition to migration.
In the next few months, Mayorkas may have to decide if he favors “equity” for huge numbers of Haitian migrants — or if he wants to save Biden’s reelection chances.
“At the moment, we have not yet seen large numbers [of migrants]—what we would characterize as a maritime mass migration,” Zimmerman told Gaetz during the March 12 hearing.