The fledgling Haitian government is turning to Blackwater founder Erik Prince to wrest control of the country back from heavily armed gangs.
Prince, a notable ally of President Donald Trump, was secretly hired months ago by Port-au-Prince to combat the deadly gangs that have wreaked havoc across the country, according to senior Haitian and American government officials, along with security experts familiar with the situation, speaking with the New York Times. Prince has been working as part of a team of lethal drone operators used to assassinate gang members.
So far, the drones have killed 200-300 people, according to Port-au-Prince human rights activist Pierre Esperance. He told the Wall Street Journal that his human rights organization hasn’t logged any civilian deaths in the strikes, suggesting impressive accuracy unbecoming of the beleaguered Haitian police.
“What should we do? Wait for the gangs to come to us and kill us?” Esperance said, voicing support for the tactic.
The Saturday report outlined the sudden, extensive use of lethal drones by government forces. Prince and other private U.S. security contractors appear to be behind the new development.
A Prince spokesperson separately confirmed that he met with senior Haitian leaders in April to discuss work on security and essential-goods deliveries.
Prince’s involvement is set to increase, with the New York Times reporting he has already sent caches of weapons to the country, and he’s assembling a team of up to 150 mercenaries to deploy to Haiti over the summer.
The State Department denied any involvement in the deal. State Secretary Marco Rubio urged the Organization of American States to assemble a coalition to intervene in Haiti at a congressional hearing earlier this month.
The full details of Prince’s deal with the Haitian government remain unknown.
The involvement of Prince in Haiti doesn’t come as a complete surprise, as he’d publicly floated the possibility for up to a year before.
“Not even 2,000 men are needed,” Prince said of the number of troops needed to fix Haiti in a March 26, 2024, post on X. “100 capable police advisers working with the remnants of local police units would roll back the gangs and chaos.”
He detailed his reasoning for wanting to intervene in a March 10, 2024, post.
“These countries are worth saving if only to protect America,” he said in response to another user who said Haiti “wouldn’t be worth the effort or 1 American life.”
“These are 11 million people truly suffering in Haiti. I’d prefer to help them where they live and not have 11 million Haitian refugees invade Florida,” he added.
The same day, he said Haiti is “very fixable,” adding that he had 4,000 personnel in rotation and over 70 fixed and rotary wing aircraft at his disposal.
A person close to the former Navy SEAL told the New York Times that Prince hopes to expand his work in Haiti to include civil administration functions, including customs, transport, revenue collection, and other government services.
Haiti, ostensibly ruled by a presidential council formed after the assassination of the last president, Jovenel Moise, on July 7, 2021, has been in a state of anarchy for years. The presidential council wields little real power, with actual power lying in the hands of brutal gangs centered in the capital. The United Nations warned that so much of the capital has fallen into the gangs’ hands that it risks falling into complete criminal control.
All previous efforts to bring order back to the country have failed. The Biden administration backed a $600 million international police mission, supported by the U.N. and largely staffed by Kenyan security personnel. The force, dubbed the Multinational Security Support Mission, is intended to back up the local police rather than replace them. Nearly one year later, the effort has largely failed to make any progress.
Originally planned as a 2,500-member force, the MSSM boasts just 400; the initial Kenyan force deployed in June. Part of the issue is the belief among those supporting the coalition that the presence of any white personnel would give the impression of a colonial occupation.
Facing the 400-man, underfunded force are roughly 15,000 heavily armed gang members, belonging to about 200 different gangs.
Haiti, long plagued by violence and instability, is facing one of its greatest crises yet. Over 10,000 people have been killed in violence since 2021, with 5,600 being killed last year alone, according to the U.N.
The gangs responsible for the violence are notable for their heavy weaponry, brutality, and erraticism.
In December, one of the worst massacres in modern Haitian history took place when Micanor “Mikano” Altes of the Viv Ansanm gang alliance was told by a Voodoo priest that his child was sick due to witchcraft from the local elderly, according to Haiti’s National Human Rights Defense Network. He and his men proceeded to slaughter over 200 civilians in the Wharf Jeremie area with machetes, knives, and guns. Their bodies were mutilated and either left in the street, burned, or dismembered and thrown into the sea.
The United States has refrained from any intervention in the collapsing country despite its proximity to the U.S. due to practical and optical concerns. Last year, then-President Joe Biden said the U.S. is “kind of occupied around the world.”
“We concluded that for the United States to deploy forces in the Western Hemisphere just raises all kinds of questions that can be easily misrepresented,” he added.
The U.S. has been wary of the optics of another intervention in the country, mindful of its 20-year occupation beginning in 1915 that saw the U.S. seize the country’s gold reserves and implement limited forced labor.