The Haiti news cycle might be our stupidest and meanest yet

But there's plenty to be learned from it

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Now, when it comes to the presidential election, it’s not as if the American people have been trained to expect high-level, honest discourse. Yet even by the standards we are accustomed to, the Springfield, Ohio news cycle, with its talk of dog-and-cat-eating hordes of migrants, still manages to be shocking in its level of malice and dishonesty.

As the story circulated by Trump’s campaign – and Trump himself at the debate – goes, the Biden administration dumped 20,000 Haitian migrants on the small town of Springfield, Ohio, and they have proceeded to destroy the place and gobble up its cats and dogs. 

The reality is that the Haitian migration to Springfield is several years old, and the Haitians there arrived primarily from other parts of the United States to work manufacturing jobs that needed filling. The relatively new residents – legal ones – have been credited with fueling an economic revival. Yet the national focus has shot fear through the town, resulting in school closings, heightened tensions, and a bomb threat. The conservative media has meanwhile sent teams of reporters to try to confirm the charges of pet eating, with Chris Rufo, The Federalist, and The Daily Wire all dispatching their gumshoes. Rufo’s guy managed to find, he reported, two cats grilled last year by Congolese residents of Dayton, Ohio. Gross. 

It makes for an odd approach to fact-gathering and narrative. First, tell a lurid tale based on nothing but a rumor in a Facebook post. Turn it into a national story. Then afterwards send sleuths all over Ohio looking for something to back it up and point fingers at those who cast doubt. All the while terrorizing the Haitian community in Springfield. Trump is now threatening to hold a rally there, egged on by his increasingly high-profile friend and supporter Laura Loomer. 

The layers of honesty go deeper when we think about why there are Haitian migrants here in the first place. If you’re getting this email, that means you probably know at least the roughly historical outline – that the Haitian people were the first to free themselves from slavery and then establish their own republic. You probably also know the Western world has spent the next two centuries punishing them for it – including through economic warfare and repeated U.S. military invasions and occupations. For a good overview of some of that history, I recommend my old podcast episode on Smedley Butler, the American major general famous for his later-in-life pamphlet “War Is A Racket.” He led a key Marine invasion and occupation of Haiti. For the more recent history, check out the episode with Jake Johnston, author of the book “Aid State,” on how our interventions have undermined and distorted Haitian politics and sovereignty. 

None of this means the Biden administration doesn’t deserve serious blame for the ongoing crisis in Haiti. In 2021, President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated and the U.S. quickly intervened to name Ariel Henry as his successor, despite the fact that he was not in line for the presidency and was heavily implicated in the assassination. We anointed him by press release through the so-called “Core Group.” According to Ambassador Daniel Foote, the U.S. envoy to Haiti, the quid pro quo we struck with Henry was straightforward: We would continue to support his undemocratic and illegitimate rule as long as he would allow the U.S. to fly in planeloads of repatriated Haitian migrants. The migrants were fleeing the very destabilization our policy was creating. Foote resigned in protest, accurately predicting catastrophe. But that’s less fun for Trump to talk about than cats and dogs on the barbecue. (See my interviews with Foote here or here for more.)

U.S. intervention in Haitian politics has never really ended, and today we have two new stories that shed light on our role there and our posture toward Haiti. 

The first, from Jose Olivares, breaks the news that our migrant detention facility in Guantanamo has quietly begun expanding in anticipation of Haitian refugees fleeing the chaos there. Our story includes photos and graphics from government contracting documents, and disturbing details on how the guards--employed by some of the more notorious private contractors out there--treat migrants. Just as importantly, Jose dug deep to report on just how many migrants have been kept at this facility over the decades.  

We also have an excerpt from Johnston’s new book. The Treasury Department recently announced sanctions of former Haitian president Michel Martelly for international drug-trafficking. The charge itself is not surprising given his reputation, but we wanted to run Jake’s chapter on him because two things immediately stood out as conspicuously absent from the announcement.

One, Martelly only became president thanks to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s flagrant intervention in the 2011 election, by which time allegations regarding “Sweet Mickey’s” source of wealth and power were widely circulating. 

And two, Martelly lives in Florida! So we have a case of the U.S. claiming to be outraged enough at an international drug trafficker to sanction him, but not so bothered that he can live as a free man here in the United States.