Haiti Criminal Collusion Transparency Act of 2023

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1684, the Haiti Criminal Collusion Transparency Act of 2023.

Mr. Speaker, it is no secret that Haiti is in a dire situation. A United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report, released this year, highlighted increasingly sophisticated and high-caliber firearms and ammunition being trafficked into Haiti amid an unprecedented and rapidly deteriorating security situation.

This level of criminal activity is the craft of experienced and well- connected individuals who have long utilized crises and instability in Haiti to gain economic control and increase their political sphere of influence.

There are as many as 200 gangs in Haiti who now control at least 85 percent of Port-au-Prince. Gang violence has resulted in the killing of over 1,200 people in Haiti in the first 5 months of the year alone. In just 11 days, the Baz Gran Grif gang murdered 69 people and injured another 83, forcing authorities to abandon several police stations. Authorities believe the gang is responsible for the killing of 14 Haitian National Police officers in late January as part of its ongoing violence.

Political insecurity following Moise's assassination has only furthered the declining security situation. The Haitian National Government's last democratically elected officials' terms expired in January, and new elections are postponed indefinitely.

While we continue to push for a Haitian-led solution to these challenges, the United States must do what it can to not allow corrupt officials that have contributed to Haiti's political and criminal crisis to travel freely to the United States. I am committed to holding corrupt officials accountable and prohibiting their travel to the United States, and this legislation would help in those efforts.

H.R. 1684 authorizes the Secretary of State to sanction Haiti's economic and political elite who regularly use gangs to leverage and maintain power. The bill also ensures that Congress receives regular reports on Haitian gang activity and related criminality.

The Haitian people need to believe that their voices matter and that their government exists to improve their quality of life, not make it more burdensome. We know these conditions are causing the rise in migration out of Haiti as people seek freedom and safety at any cost.

Mr. Speaker, I believe we have a duty to make sure that we identify and hold accountable those who relish in the chaos caused by supporting gang activity, using kidnappings and rape to control and silence communities, and using coercion to bring youth in and around Port-au- Prince into the service of criminal activity.

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Mr. MEEKS. Kamlager-Dove).

Mr. Speaker, I introduced and marked up this bill with robust bipartisan support. I thank my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, Chairman McCaul and the chair of the subcommittee, Chairwoman Salazar; my colleagues who just spoke, Representative Cherfilus- McCormick and Representative Kamlager-Dove; and others who worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Congress takes steps to address the crisis created by Haitian gangs.

Mr. Speaker, the people of Haiti deserve to know which organizations and individuals support destabilizing criminal activity, including those who take advantage of desperate people who are already extremely vulnerable, trafficking them throughout the region and making financial gains at every stop along the way.

Mr. Speaker, we cannot allow these elites, those who are paying the gangs, those who are incentivizing the gangs to create and do horrific things, to just keep walking about with impunity.

We have to stand up and state that we are going to point them out and sanction them to give the people of Haiti an opportunity to feel that their government and their country can move forward.

We can no longer just talk about having elections without having the gangs wiped out and away from Haiti because they would control the elections.

This sends a message to those elites, those who are financing the gangs, those who think that they can continue their criminal activity, that the United States is going to sanction them and that they won't be able to cross the borders and go back and forth.

This bill would require the Secretary of State to submit an annual report to Congress regarding the ties between criminal gangs and political and economic elites in Haiti and impose sanctions on political and economic elites involved in such criminal activities.

I have a lot of Haitians in my district. They want some action. They want some relief from the activities of these criminal gangs.

The message that this bill sends, and what the follow-up with the administration would say, is that the United States House of Representatives, in a very bipartisan fashion and working collectively together, will not allow them to continue their corrupt criminal activities.

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