The envoy for President Biden in Haiti has resigned due to ‘inhumane’ treatment of Haitian migrants.
A long-serving US diplomat in Haiti has resigned in protest over the Biden administration’s “inhumane” decision to deport thousands of Haitians attempting to enter the country back to their homeland.
In his resignation letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Ambassador Daniel Foote, a Special Envoy for Haiti, stated that he could not be linked with the government’s “inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees.” He’s been in his current position for two months.
Foote went on to say that the US strategy to Haiti is “remains deeply flawed,” and that his counsel has gone unheeded.
PBS News Hour and Le Nouvelliste, a Haitian newspaper, first reported on the letter.
The announcement comes days after shocking photographs emerged from the Texas-Mexico border, where thousands of Haitian migrants had arrived after crossing through other Latin American countries.
“The people of Haiti, mired in poverty, hostage to terror, kidnappings, robberies, and massacres of armed gangs and suffering under a corrupt government with gang alliances, simply cannot support the forced infusion of thousands of returned migrants lacking food, shelter, and money without additional, avoidable human tragedy,” Foote wrote.
Foote was named Special Envoy in July after a long career in the Foreign Service.