ON POLITICS

America Owes Haiti More Than This

Time to acknowledge the US complicitness in Haiti’s demise.

U.S. Border Patrol agents stop migrants crossing the Rio Grande River near the Del Rio-Acuna Port of Entry in Del Rio, Texas, U.S., on Sunday, Sept. 19, 2021. U.S. officials plan to expel thousands of Haitian migrants that arrived at the small Texas city of Del Rio this week. Photographer: Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

This week, horrific images of Haitian migrants being whipped by Texas Border Patrol agents went viral. For many Black people in the United States the images were beyond triggering. They were disgustingly reminiscent of a time –not too long ago — when the open abuse of Black people at the hands of slave masters and slave catchers was the norm. Currently, more than 14,500 Haitian migrants are camped underneath a bridge in Del Rio awaiting processing by Border Patrol. On Monday, the area saw temperatures that soared to 104 degrees. To say that what is happening at the border is a crisis of epic proportions on multiple fronts would be an understatement.

“We have depleted their resources. Strapped the nation in debt. Inserted our own hand-picked presidents.”

What’s most chilling about the current situation at the border is that without the haunting images captured by Agence France-Press photojournalist Paul Ratje, few would be the wiser as to the human rights violations being undertaken, not by the cruel hands of the Trump presidency, who famously referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries,” but under a Democrat…