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      Biden finally heads to border as critics condemn his migrant crackdown

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      Biden finally heads to border as critics condemn his migrant crackdown Advocates attack president’s failure to uphold campaign pledges ahead of first visit to southern border since he took officeUnder pressure to address a surge of migrants at the US-Mexico border, Joe Biden announced a far-reaching crackdown on migrants seeking asylum last week, expanding the use of a controversial public health measure known as Title 42 to restrict people from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela from illegally entering the US, while offering those legally seeking relief a new pathway to America.Before the president’s first trip to the US-Mexico border since he took office in 2020, immigration advocates condemned the Biden administration’s decision to expand Title 42 as disheartening and a failure to uphold his campaign promises. They took some solace in the creation of a legal pathway to asylum for those in four countries, but still, for them, Biden’s actions were not enough – they leave out other migrants, and the parole program is beset by requirements that impose significant barriers to migrants without access to resources, perpetuating inequities within the US immigration system.In other words, immigration advocates say, the cost of expanded expulsion of migrants under the guise of public health without a clear path to asylum outweighs the promise of expanded refugee access and a legal outlet for asylum. “For a lot of us working in immigration justice, at the start of the administration, there was incredible hope that Title 42 would end and push forward to re-establish access to asylum,” the director of the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign, Alex Miller, said. “We’ve been disappointed.”The Biden administration’s so-called “carrot and stick” approach aims to deter the historic-high millions of migrants fleeing persecution from their home countries and seeking US asylum from entering the country illegally. Federal figures from the 2022 fiscal year show that US border agents stopped migrants more than 2m times along the southern border, setting an all-time record. They turned migrants away under the Title 42 provision more than 1m times.“The problem is the carrot is not universally accessible,” Miller added. “Legal access to asylum will be limited to those who are the right nationalities, have the right means and support, to apply for parole … The sticks they are offering are restricting access, and that’s not a fair trade.”Under the Biden administration’s new policy, if migrants from those countries pass background checks, buy a plane ticket, obtain financial sponsorship, and meet other requirements, they would be allowed to legally enter under the “parole program”. They would be authorized to live and work in the US for two years.But immigration advocates worry about the Department of Homeland Security’s proposed rule – which they say is similar to the Donald Trump White House’s “transit ban” – because it would make migrants seeking asylum ineligible if they failed to seek protection in a third country before reaching the US and if they “circumvent available, established pathways to lawful migration,” as homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week.They also worried that the parole program’s requirements – modeled after the administration’s approach to refugees fleeing Afghanistan, Venezuela, and Ukraine – impose barriers to migrants who lack the resources to buy flights and find a financial sponsor.On Twitter, United We Dream, an immigrant youth-led rights group, slammed Biden’s new policy “a racist and classist attack” on migrants. United We Dream’s deputy director of federal advocacy, Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, said in a statement that the Biden administration’s expansion of Title 42 would hurt “the same people seeking asylum that they purport to protect”.The American Civil Liberties Union’s director of border strategies, Jonathan Blazer, said in a statement that the Biden administration’s “knee-jerk expansion of Title 42 will put more lives in grave danger”, adding that his plan “ties his administration to the poisonous anti-immigrant policies of the Trump era instead of restoring fair access to asylum protections”.“His commitments to people seeking safety will ring utterly hollow if he moves forward in substituting one illegal anti-asylum Trump policy for another,” Blazer said.Miller told the Guardian that the administration’s new proposals include allowing asylum seekers to use an app in English and Spanish to schedule appointments. That, the administration argues, will reduce “wait times and crowds at the US port of entry and allow for safe, orderly, and humane processing”. Miller said that effort makes the legal asylum seeking process harder for migrants who lack technological access and speak indigenous dialects beyond Spanish as well as for those who cannot obtain legal representation to help them navigate the process.Biden has said that Congress needs to enact a more comprehensive immigration reform. In the interim, the administration’s new parole process, which he described as “safe, orderly” and humane, would “make things better but will not fix the border problem completely”.The National Immigration Law Center’s vice-president of law and policy, Lisa Graybill, told the Guardian that while the administration’s creation of the asylum that gives 30,000 people access is better than nothing, its overall approach reflects seeing immigration enforcement and creating outlets for asylum as a “zero-sum game”. It’s a mistake presidents and politicians have made before, she said.She added that Biden had been “following an old playbook that does not work” by allocating resources toward enforcement rather than creating a “humane and orderly processing system that is built around recognizing the right to asylum instead of violating it”. Instead, the parole program as designed, she said, will hurt impoverished migrants and those who fled their countries in haste without meeting all requirements, acting as barriers to even those who have legitimate asylum claims while helping middle and higher income migrants with access to resources.The chief adviser for policy and partnerships at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Angela Kelley, said that Biden’s creation of the parole program was “smart” and reflected an attempt to use the “tools in his toolbox and use them in more creative ways”. She pointed out that the Biden administration aimed to triple the number of refugees resettled seeking asylum from Latin American and Caribbean countries. Yet, she added, the outdated US immigration laws have not kept up with who qualifies for asylum, such as those fleeing the damaging effects of climate change.“That’s the difference maker: under Trump, it was all about kicking out people – they were systematic in dismantling the refugee program, legal immigration channels of people coming for employment for families, for students. That’s not the approach of the Biden administration,” Kelley said, noting that it will take time to see the effects Biden’s actions will take on the migration system. “They’re restoring all of that. The unfortunate continued reliance on Title 42 is a monkey on their back that they have to figure out how to shake and use the resources you have … to try [to] manage the migration of people the best you can.”Title 42’s future is uncertain as the US supreme court in December stopped Biden’s administration from ending the program to give the justices more time to weigh in on whether states have the legal grounds to intervene in an ongoing case over the program.Kelley, who had previously done immigration work for Biden and the Barack Obama White House, saw the expansion of its Title 42 program as “worrisome” for vulnerable migrants who would be sent back to dangerous conditions in Mexico. She noted that by creating legal pathways to asylum, the administration is trying to “to ease the pressures” at the US border in the hope that they wouldn’t need the pandemic program any longer.“What is heartbreaking is that in an effort to limit the number of people who are coming, you are turning away asylum seekers, who are the migrants you want to protect,” Kelley said.Immigration advocates and Biden agree that long-term changes needed to come from Congress – a questionable prospect given that the Republican-controlled House struggled to elect its speaker, and past bipartisan efforts at immigration reform had also failed.Even so, some advocates say now it’s a question of where resources are sent: They called for more resources to be directed toward assisting nonprofits and NGO groups working with asylum seekers at the border, hiring more asylum officers and more immigration judges, and investing in more legal assistance for migrants unable to afford private attorneys.“For three years under Title 42, access to asylum has been undermined,” Miller said. “All of the documented evidence of kidnapping, rape, and extortion of migrants in Mexico, in particular at the border – it’s incredibly troubling that we’re expanding the expulsions of migrants to Mexico.“These are not just numbers, these are people with individual stories with their own lives they’re trying to defend. It’s really easy to get lost in the big picture. We’re talking about people here.”TopicsUS immigrationUS politicsUS-Mexico borderVenezuelaHaitiCubaNicaraguanewsReuse this content More

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      Turning Pregnant Women and Doctors Into Criminals

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      More from our inbox:A Piercing Inquiry Into the History of Haiti’s PlightA Self-Fulfilling Election Prophecy? Ben HickeyTo the Editor:In “Punishing Women Who Have Abortions” (Opinion, Sunday Review, May 15), Jane Coaston mentions the possibility being discussed in some anti-abortion circles of charging those who have abortions with homicide. There is another way some in the anti-abortion camp speak of punishing women who seek abortions, in this case very ill women — letting them die.This is not a majority position in the anti-abortion movement, but it is not a new idea. In 1984, Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, stated, in explaining his opposition to exceptions to abortion bans in cases of threats to a woman’s life: “I believe that if you have to choose between new life and existing life, you should choose new life. The person who has had an opportunity to live at least has been given that gift by God and should make way for new life on earth.”In the likely event that the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade and about half the states ban abortion, it is in the realm of possibility that extremist politicians in some of these states will be successful in blocking any exceptions whatsoever. Doctors in those states will be placed in a horrible position, facing years of jail time if they abort the fetus, and women will die needlessly.Carole JoffeSan FranciscoThe writer is a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco.To the Editor:An important problem in criminalizing abortion is frequently overlooked: policing it.New York County abortion trial transcripts in the John Jay College of Criminal Justice archives (1883-1927) show that because illegal abortions invariably took place in private locations — usually the home of the doctor or midwife who performed the abortion — the authorities had to rely on unsavory detection methods.These included threatening the hospitalized victims of botched abortions with arrest unless they named and testified against their abortion providers; making deals for leniency with pregnant women arrested for unrelated crimes if they agreed to help entrap a suspected abortion provider; and setting up elaborate sting operations with women employed by the police.Even with the more sophisticated surveillance methods available today, law enforcement personnel will often be obliged to rely on entrapment to prosecute abortion providers in states where abortion is illegal. The surprising number of acquittals in the historic abortion cases I have studied suggest that entrapment can be distasteful to jurors. Entrapment methods may also have a demoralizing, demeaning and potentially corrupting effect on the police.Elisabeth GitterNew YorkThe writer is emerita professor of English and interdisciplinary studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.To the Editor:I’d like to see an article about “How Will We Punish Men Who Don’t Support Women Who Have the Pregnancies.” We are still focused on the women, but now we have the technologies to identify the fathers and expect them to fully support the children they conceive. Would this change the dynamics of pregnancy, abortions and support? You bet it would.Janice WoychikChapel Hill, N.C.A Piercing Inquiry Into the History of Haiti’s PlightAn illustration depicting plantations burning in 1791, during the Haitian Revolution.Universal Images Group, via Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Your comprehensive May 22 special section on Haiti, “The Ransom,” was eye-opening. It showed that debt is a tool of the rich comparable to slavery — and has been throughout history.But the special section, sadly, also shows the limits of talking about reparations as justice. Even if the French government paid Haiti back all that it took, with interest, the resulting payment would scarcely account for the lost opportunities and social dislocations caused by its aggression.Andrew OramArlington, Mass.To the Editor:When I arrived in Haiti for the first time, in 1996, I had already been in a number of poverty-stricken countries in this hemisphere. There were similarities, of course, but the depth and pervasiveness of impoverishment and the unreliability or absence of the most basic physical and governmental infrastructure were on a scale I had not previously encountered.It was not surprising that Haitians felt that they had little control over their lives — lives spent in surviving day to day.How did it come to this? Your series “The Ransom” provides well-researched, convincing answers to that question.George Santayana warned that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We cannot heed that warning if that past is not known to begin with. Now that the reality of that Haitian history is more widely known, will it continue to be repeated?John CosgroveLumberton, N.J.The writer is professor emeritus in the Graduate School of Social Service at Fordham University.A Self-Fulfilling Election Prophecy?To the Editor:Current reporting from many Democratic and Republican pundits presumes that Republicans will take over the House and the Senate in the November elections. No doubt they base this prediction on polling and the historical results of midterm elections. Perhaps they are right, but perhaps not.While such a prediction serves the Republicans well, for the Democrats, it’s toxic. An attitude of “it’s all over but the voting” has the potential to discourage Democrats from bothering to vote, turning that presumption into a self-fulfilling prophecy.Mary-Lou WeismanWestport, Conn. More

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      Your Monday Briefing: Australia’s New Leader

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      Plus President Biden’s trip to Asia and catastrophic floods in India and Bangladesh.Good morning. We’re covering a change of power in Australia, President Biden’s trip to Asia and catastrophic floods in India and Bangladesh.Anthony Albanese, the next prime minister of Australia.Jaimi Joy/ReutersAustralia’s incoming Labor leaderPrime Minister Scott Morrison conceded defeat to Anthony Albanese, the incoming Labor prime minister, ending nine years of conservative leadership.The opposition Labor party made the election a referendum on Morrison’s conduct. Albanese, whose campaign was gaffe-prone and light on policy, promised a more decent form of politics, running as a modest Mr. Fix-It who promised to seek “renewal, not revolution.”Voters were most focused on cost-of-living issues, but the election was also about climate change, Damien Cave, our bureau chief in Sydney, writes in an analysis. Australians rejected Morrison’s deny-and-delay approach, which has made the country a global laggard on emission cuts, for Albanese’s vision of a future built on renewable energy.Details: In Australia, where mandatory voting means unusually high turnout, voters did not just grant Labor a clear victory. They delivered a larger share of their support to minor parties and independents who demanded more action on climate change — a shift away from major party dominance.Food: Elections in Australia come with a side of “democracy sausage” hot off the barbecue, a beloved tradition that acts as a fund-raiser for local groups and makes the compulsory trip to the voting booth feel less like a chore and more like a block party.President Biden being greeted by Park Jin, South Korea’s foreign minister.Doug Mills/The New York TimesPresident Biden visits Asian alliesOn his first trip to Asia as president, Joe Biden attempted to strengthen ties with allies rattled by Donald Trump’s erratic diplomacy and wary of Beijing’s growing influence.In Seoul on Saturday, he met with President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was inaugurated 11 days prior, and criticized Trump’s attempts to cozy up to Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s dictator. Biden and Yoon will explore ways to expand joint military exercises that Trump sought to curtail in a concession to Kim. Today in Tokyo, Biden will unveil an updated trade agreement that seeks to coordinate policies but without the market access or tariff reductions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Trump abandoned five years ago. The less sweeping framework has some in the region skeptical about its value.Context: Russia’s war in Ukraine snarled Biden’s original strategy of pivoting foreign policy attention to Asia. The trip is an effort to reaffirm that commitment and demonstrate a focus on countering China.Heavy rainfall flooded streets in Bangalore, India, on Friday.Jagadeesh Nv/EPA, via ShutterstockHeavy floods in India, BangladeshMore than 60 people were killed, and millions more were rendered homeless as heavy pre-monsoon rains washed away train stations, towns and villages.Extreme weather is growing more common across South Asia, which has recently suffered devastating heat waves, as the effects of climate change intensify.This year, parts of northern and central India recorded their highest average temperatures for April. Last year, extreme rainfall and landslides washed away sprawling Rohingya refugee camps overnight in Bangladesh, and in 2020, torrential rains submerged at least a quarter of the country.Context: India and Bangladesh are particularly vulnerable to climate change because of their proximity to the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. The tropical waters are increasingly experiencing heat waves, which have led to dry conditions in some places and “a significant increase in rainfall” in others, according to a recent study.Details: The Brahmaputra, one of the world’s largest rivers, has inundated vast areas of agricultural land, villages and towns in India’s remote, hard-hit northeast.THE LATEST NEWSAsiaThe Taliban have also urged women to stay home unless they have a compelling reason to go out.Kiana Hayeri for The New York TimesThe Taliban are aggressively pushing women to wear burqas and crushing rare public protests against the order.Protests continue in Sri Lanka, as citizens demonstrate against a president they blame for crashing the economy.The U.N.’s top human rights official will visit Xinjiang, where Beijing has cracked down on the Uyghur minority, and other parts of China this week. Activists say the trip holds significant risks for the credibility of her office.Some Chinese people are looking to emigrate as pandemic controls drag into their third year.The WarRussian forces attempted to breach Sievierodonetsk’s defenses from four directions but were repelled, a Ukrainian official said.Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHere are live updates.Russia renewed its attack on Sievierodonetsk, one of Ukraine’s main strongholds in the Donbas region. Its forces are also trying to cross a river in the region despite having suffered a major blow there this month.In a rare acknowledgment, a Kremlin minister said that sanctions have “practically broken” the country’s logistics.Profile: The Russian Orthodox leader Patriarch Kirill I has provided spiritual cover for the invasion.Atrocities: The Times is documenting evidence of potential war crimes, like killings in Bucha, some carried out by a notorious Russian brigade. A Times visual investigation shows how Russian soldiers executed people there.World NewsThe U.S. has surpassed one million Covid deaths, according to The Times’s database.The coalition that replaced Benjamin Netanyahu is crumbling — potentially leading to new Israeli elections that could return him to power.Iran is cracking down on its filmmakers, arresting leading artists in what analysts see as a warning to the general population amid mounting discontent.Kate McKinnon, Pete Davidson and Aidy Bryant are leaving “Saturday Night Live.”Tornadoes in western Germany killed one person and injured dozens more, while an unusual heat wave struck parts of Spain and France.A Morning ReadResty Zilmar recently had to return to a more urban area for work.Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York TimesFor decades, young Filipinos have left rural areas in pursuit of economic success, leading to overcrowded cities. The pandemic temporarily reversed that pattern, and many enjoy rural life. If the government makes good on stated efforts to reinvigorate the hinterlands, the shift may stick.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 4On the ground. More

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      Haiti Opposition Group Calls on U.S. to End Support for Current Government

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      With tensions rising, many see Monday as a deadline for the government to step down.A powerful Haitian opposition group is demanding the United States withdraw its support for the government of Prime Minister Ariel Henry in Haiti, saying the administration’s legitimacy is tarnished by delayed elections and Mr. Henry’s potential connection to the assassination of the country’s president.The opposition group, called the Montana Accord, has called for the United States to act by Monday — the date on which President Jovenel Moïse had vowed to step down, before he was gunned down in his home last year. The government will be rendered unconstitutional by Monday, according to the Montana Accord and independent experts.The showdown has left the Biden administration in an increasingly uncomfortable position. Afraid that Haiti may slip further into chaos, the United States for now is supporting the status quo: a ruling party that has governed for about a decade and seen the power of gangs explode across the country and corruption run rampant.“When we look at the history of Haiti, it is replete with the international community reaching into Haitian politics and picking winners and losers,” Brian Nichols, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, said in January. “Our goal in terms of the U.S. government is to avoid that.”As doubts mount that the Henry administration can hold elections this year, anti-government demonstrations have erupted throughout Port-au-Prince, the capital, and local gangs have used the moment of rising uncertainty to expand their territory.Adding to the instability, gangs stormed the airport road on Friday, shutting down businesses and putting Haiti’s police force on high alert in anticipation of more violence on Monday.The Montana Accord has called for the formation of a transitional government, with its leader, Fritz Alphonse Jean, at the helm to restore security before ultimately holding elections. By continuing to support the current government, the group says, the United States is essentially choosing a side.“Insecurity is rampant, fear of kidnapping and rape are the everyday situation of the average Haitian,” Mr. Jean said in an interview on Friday. “This is a state of disarray and the Henry government is just sitting there unable to address those challenges.”A roadblock a day before the funeral of Jovenel Moise in Cap-Haitien last July.Federico Rios for The New York TimesAnalysts acknowledge that a transitional government led by the Montana Accord would also be unconstitutional. But they say it would have more legitimacy than the Henry government because the group — made up of civil society organizations and powerful political figures — represents a wider array of the population than the current government, which was voted in with an abysmally low turnout.“What’s the most constitutional government you can have at the moment? The short answer is zero,” said Alexandra Filippova, a senior staff attorney at the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, a think tank focused on improving the justice system.“So the next best question is, what moves you closer to a legitimate constitutional government? We see that the Montana group is a flawed process but is the best way forward to creating a path for a legitimate government.”Senior American officials have urged the Montana Accord to work with Mr. Henry’s government to chart a path forward, and acknowledge that the group is an important partner in achieving a broadly representative political system to help steer the country toward elections.Mr. Henry has said the next government must be formed through elections, not a transitional government.The Montana Accord contends, however, that Mr. Henry has not created a feasible blueprint to improve security and to hold free and fair elections safely amid widespread gang violence, surging corruption and a disillusioned Haitian population.Adding to the distrust, Mr. Henry may also be implicated in Mr. Moïse’s killing, opposition members say.In September, Haiti’s top prosecutor claimed the prime minister was in touch with the chief suspect in Mr. Moïse’s death in the days before and hours after the assassination. The prosecutor asked the justice minister to charge Mr. Henry formally in the assassination. Mr. Henry swiftly fired both officials.Phone records obtained by The New York Times and an exclusive interview with another suspect in the assassination also bolster those accusations. Mr. Henry has denied the allegations.“The whole system is not trustworthy,” Monique Clesca, a member of the Montana Accord, said. “There is no way you can go to elections with Ariel Henry; nobody trusts him after this assassination.”Electing a new transitional president for the Montana Accord in Port-au-Prince last month.Ralph Tedy Erol/ReutersSo far, American officials have dismissed the accusations against the prime minister while urging the government and the Montana Accord to achieve a consensus. Mr. Henry, a senior American official said in an interview this month, is viewed as a caretaker and does not have the United States’ unconditional support.Average Haitians are skeptical that either the government or the opposition can improve their lives.“There’s nothing to expect from the decision makers, they always look out for themselves,” said Vanessa Jacques, 29, an unemployed mother.Ms. Jacques described a feeling of insecurity so deep that it has paralyzed her life, preventing her from attending university or running errands.“Living in Haiti, you have to look out for yourself, or no one else will,” she said.Recent presidential elections in Haiti have been plagued with problems and unrepresentative of the population. Mr. Moïse was elected in 2016 with only 600,000 votes, of a population of nearly six million eligible voters. His predecessor, Michel Martelly, was elected in a controversial election in which the United States was accused of intervening on his behalf.Still, many Haitian leaders see elections as the only path forward.“Elections are a must,” said Edmond Bocchit, Haiti’s ambassador to the United States. “Now it’s a matter of when and how are we going to get together to get it done.”While some business leaders in Haiti say Mr. Henry has questions to answer regarding Mr. Moïse’s assassination, they add that he has been able to keep the situation from unraveling and also achieved an important goal: raising fuel prices. Fuel subsidies have nearly bankrupted the state, and the previous government was unable to remove them without setting off riots.A road intersection near a street market in Pétionville last September amid insecurity and gas shortages.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times“The country has to keep moving,” said Wilhelm Lemke, the president of the​​ Haitian Manufacturers Association. “And they’ve kept it from unraveling,” he said, but Mr. Henry needs to reach out to the opposition to form a more representative government. He stressed that Mr. Henry had to sit down with the opposition to reach a broader political accord.But “the prime minister should address the inferences that he may be part of the assassination and all that. By not addressing it, you’re bringing water to your detractors,” he said. “And you’re diluting your moral authority.”Chris Cameron More

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      ‘Radically optimistic’: the thinktank chief who believes the US can ‘self-correct’

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      Interview‘Radically optimistic’: the thinktank chief who believes the US can ‘self-correct’David Smith in WashingtonPatrick Gaspard discusses his Haitian dissident parents, meeting Mandela and protecting democracy Barack Obama could be forgiven for considering himself a big shot. But Patrick Gaspard used to keep his ego in check.“You’re of course an extraordinary historic figure but I’m sorry, this doesn’t compare,” Gaspard would joke, “meeting Nelson Mandela will always be the top of Mount Kilimanjaro for me.”The 53-year-old has a unique perspective on the men who became the US’s and South Africa’s first Black presidents. As a trade unionist and community activist, he first met Mandela a few months after his release from prison. Later he became close to Obama, serving in his White House and as his diplomat in South Africa.Now Gaspard is the new president and chief executive of the Center for American Progress (CAP), described by the Politico website as “the most influential think tank of the Biden era”. He succeeds Neera Tanden, who left to become a senior adviser to the president.In a wide-ranging interview in his corner office, Gaspard offered lessons learned from Mandela and Obama, his verdict on Biden’s first year in office and what his global perspective tells him about the survival of American democracy.He was born near Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire), to Haitian parents. The family moved to New York when he was four. “All of my interest in politics comes from the origin story of my family,” he says.His father was a qualified lawyer in Haiti who belonged to a generation of young activists pushing for free and fair elections and open society. But this was the start of the dictatorship of François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier, who waged political violence to crush dissent.“My father had a shotgun put to his head and [was] told in no uncertain terms he had to cease and desist from that kind of rhetoric,” Gaspard says. “He had the opportunity to leave Haiti as hundreds of thousands of Haitian intellectuals did in that moment, and he became an educator in the Congo. Unfortunately, many of his classmates couldn’t leave and they were jailed or killed in Haiti.”Congo was experiencing its own exodus of Belgian and French educators. A UN programme encouraged French-speaking educators and intellectuals from the African diaspora to come to the country and train the next generation of leaders. Gaspard’s father was among them and, when he moved to the US, he remained connected to a new pan-African community.Gaspard grew up in this milieu, mingling with South African exiles and Black trade unionists who organised national demonstrations against the apartheid regime. He joined Jesse Jackson and others protesting outside the South African embassy. When he was 19, Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto of sanctions against the white minority government.“That sent me on a path that this work was important, collective action was impactful and this was a government here in America that could self-correct,” recalls the Columbia University graduate. “That’s the thing that most inspired me about politics in America.”In February 1990 Mandela walked to freedom after 27 years in prison. A few months later he visited the US, where Gaspard was a lead organiser of New York’s rapturous welcome. He met Mandela a second time in 1991 when David Dinkins, the mayor of New York, led a delegation to South Africa.“I was quite moved by the combination of conviction and humility that I had never experienced before,” he said.After leadership roles at the Service Employees International Union, one of the biggest unions in the US, Gaspard served as national political director of Obama’s 2008 presidential election campaign, which culminated in the once unthinkable fall of a racial barrier.“It is an extraordinary thing for someone who comes from a minority community in a country to be elected to the highest office in that country,” Gaspard says. “That moment says something about America, but it also says something about the world that we exist in and the possibilities here.“There is an unmistakeable history of brutality towards Black people in this country that was legal, systemic and tied to profit systems in America and that legacy continues to be manifesting in so many ways. It’s undeniable but what’s also undeniable is the fact that America has made a journey at every level of society to push through that, overcome that, recognise it and in this strange twist of history, even use some of that to its extraordinary strength in the world.“When I had the privilege of serving in South Africa, I was asked constantly about how America could be lecturing the world about human rights when it had this condition inside of its own country, the historic treatment of Black people. I would say it was actually because of that history that we had a perspective that was unique, that gave us a sense of what we could contribute to the broader conversation of rights in the world and what it means to promote and then protect the interests of the most vulnerable in society.”He adds: “So the night that Barack Obama was elected, and I was standing in Grant Park [in Chicago] with tears streaming down my face, it was a moment of reflection on a long arc of the American journey, but also a sense that I had as an immigrant, as an Africanist, of how that would be reflected in the rest of the world and the opening and the opportunity that it would create for America to be a more consequential standard bearer of the principle.”From 2009 until 2011, Gaspard was director of the White House office of political affairs before switching to executive director of the Democratic National Committee. He was ambassador of South Africa from 2013 to 2016, witnessing the nationwide eruption of grief and gratitude that met Mandela’s death at the age of 95.South Africa has made rare headlines in the US in recent weeks because it was the first country to identify the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. Subsequent evidence suggests that this was may have more to do with the country’s world class scientists rather than it being the variant’s ground zero. Yet South Africa was a victim of its own success, punished by a US flight ban even as Omicron raged elsewhere.What do Americans get wrong about South Africa, and Africa generally? “Everything,” Gaspard says. “In general, Americans writ large know very little about the continent and what they know falls into a space of negative information and, until that changes, I think they will continue to get bad policy and I think we’ll continue to have our lunch eaten by China, for instance, in those spaces. The flight ban against South Africa is a perfect example of how very little we understand about the continent.”It must have been strange for Gaspard, whose neighbourhood included Zimbabwe and other embattled democracies, to watch the rise of Donald Trump rise from afar. Just as in South Africa, there was no understanding it without understanding race.“So here’s the funny thing. I’m sitting in South Africa in the run-up to the 2016 election and all of my white progressive friends in politics in America – I’m emailing with them, I’m calling with them, constant conversations – they’re all telling me, ‘No way is Donald Trump going to become the nominee of the Republican party’.“All of my Black friends in America, ‘Oh no, he gonna be the nominee. They are definitely nominating that guy.’ All my Black friends to a person, the ones in politics and the ones who have nothing to do with politics are like, ‘Yeah, he’ll be the nominee and he’ll win’. I was like, ‘What?’“There’s dismay, fear, but no surprise because when you have suffered the blows of history, you’re always anticipating the next blow and African Americans understand that in America there is a very clear story that can be told about elections.”Trump infamously referred to Haiti, El Salvador and parts of Africa as “shithole countries” and never travelled to Africa. He eventually filled the diplomatic vacancy created by Gaspard’s departure from Pretoria with Lana Marks, a luxury handbag designer from Palm Beach, Florida.Gaspard, meanwhile, returned to the US and became president of the Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros and one of the biggest private philanthropies in the world. He oversaw a $1.4bn budget and staff of 1,600, grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic and rise of authoritarian regimes around the world.Then came the CAP which, founded in 2003 by John Podesta, former White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, is accustomed to having the ear of Democratic presidents. Gaspard says he is in regular contact with the Biden administration, key agencies and “the progressive ecosystem that’s helping to stand up the agenda”.The CAP can also be a critical friend. “During the spike in Haitian asylum seekers at the Texas border, when the world saw those reprehensible images of how those asylum seekers were being treated, I didn’t hesitate as the president of CAP to speak out against the policies and to personally go to the border to bear witness to what was occurring and to call for and demand different practises in how we adjudicate those matters.”There has been “tremendous progress” at the border since then, he says. But Biden’s approval rating remains stubbornly low and there is a sense of gloom in the air. As the president nears his first anniversary in office, what is Gaspard’s verdict so far? “My god, can we step back for a second and have some perspective?“If someone had told me or anyone on January 5th that 11 months later Joe Biden would have managed to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill, successfully advanced a historic stimulus bill that’s led to the fastest 11 month job growth in America that we’ve ever had … and was also on the precipice of passing a piece of legislation that will expand access to Medicare benefits, lift up low wage workers who are the frontlines of the care economy, make the most progress on investments in climate change in two generations, I would have taken all of that if you’d offered it to me.”In his inaugural address, Biden vowed to address the interlocking crises of climate, coronavirus, economy and racial justice. On the last of these, police reform and voting rights have stalled in Congress, raising fears that last year’s Black Lives Matter protests after the police murder of George Floyd could prove a moment, not a movement, after all.Gaspard, however, believes the momentum is sustainable. “Of course there was the white knuckle moment of George Floyd and the explosion of pent-up advocacy and rage but now there’s a lot of good, thoughtful work. You’re going to have your setbacks but there’s also been extraordinary progress in a number of states – Missouri, Ohio, California – where you can quantify what’s changed. That will continue. Civil rights just does not move in a linear way.”Less than a year after the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol, however, the existential threats to democracy itself persist in a deeply divided nation. Gaspard describes himself as “radically optimistic” but not “Pollyannish” about the gathering storm.“This is a thing I hesitate to say out loud but I really do believe that we should have the understanding that in 2024, when we are conducting elections across the country, there is the potential for us to experience January 6 on steroids, for us to see it in state after state in state capitols.”“There’s the potential for that kind of civil disruption if we are not on our side intentional about pushing back now and about making as persuasive an argument for democracy as we can and an argument that’s manifest in actual legislation and executive orders.”Reagan famously referred to America as a “shining city on a hill”; Biden has said the country can be defined in one word: “possibilities”. It was such promises that enticed Gaspard’s parents here half a century ago. But the turmoil of recent years has tarnished its image. Does he think his mother and father would have made the same choice today?“We have seen that America, as an aspirational brand, has taken a hit the last several years. There’s a direct relationship between that and the previous president of the United States and how he postured on the world stage and projected us as a closed, hyper sovereign space that did not cooperate in a multilateral way and that led with military might and ‘America first’ as opposed to partnership and cooperation.“There is a fear that I hear among immigrants that are in our community: they worry that the face of America has changed. When they see things like ‘the great replacement’ conspiracy that’s driving all kinds of not just rhetoric but actual policy on the ground for conservatives, they worry about what kind of violence it can visit on their children. All that anxiety is real.”But again he sees the glass as half full. “I can tell you I’m pretty confident that if my parents were faced with that choice today that America is still the place they would see as this shining beacon of hope and opportunity, irrespective of its challenges which are real and more nakedly exposed than they have been in some time.TopicsUS politicsSouth AfricaHaitiinterviewsReuse this content More

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      As U.S. Navigates Crisis in Haiti, a Bloody History Looms Large

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      American policy decisions are vital to understanding Haiti’s political instability, and why it remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.In September 1994, the United States was on the verge of invading Haiti.Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country’s first democratically elected president, had been deposed in a military coup three years earlier. Haiti had descended into chaos. Gangs and paramilitaries terrorized the population — taking hostages, assassinating dissidents and burning crops. International embargoes had strangled the economy, and tens of thousands of people were trying to emigrate to America.But just days before the first U.S. troops would land in Haiti, Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a senator on the Foreign Affairs Committee, spoke against a military intervention. He argued that the United States had more pressing crises — including ethnic cleansing in Bosnia — and that Haiti was not especially important to American interests.“I think it’s probably not wise,” Mr. Biden said of the planned invasion in an interview with television host Charlie Rose.He added: “If Haiti — a God-awful thing to say — if Haiti just quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn’t matter a whole lot in terms of our interest.”Despite Mr. Biden’s apprehension, the invasion went forward and the Haitian military junta surrendered within hours. Mr. Aristide was soon restored to power, and the Clinton administration began deporting thousands of Haitians.Nearly a decade later, Haiti’s constitutional order would collapse again, prompting another U.S. military intervention, more migrants and more deportations. As rebels threatened to invade the capital in 2004, Mr. Aristide resigned under pressure from U.S. officials. A provisional government was formed with American backing. The violence and unrest continued.That cycle of crisis and U.S. intervention in Haiti — punctuated by periods of relative calm but little improvement in the lives of most people — has persisted to this day. Since July, a presidential assassination, an earthquake and a tropical storm have deepened the turmoil.Mr. Biden, now president, is overseeing yet another intervention in Haiti’s political affairs, one that his critics say is following an old Washington playbook: backing Haitian leaders accused of authoritarian rule, either because they advance American interests or because U.S. officials fear the instability of a transition of power. Making sense of American policy in Haiti over the decades — driven at times by economic interests, Cold War strategy and migration concerns — is vital to understanding Haiti’s political instability, and why it remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, even after an infusion of more than $5 billion in U.S. aid in the last decade alone.A bloody history of American influence looms large, and a century of U.S. efforts to stabilize and develop the country have ultimately ended in failure.Marines in Haiti marched during the last days of occupation, which ended in 1934 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy.Bettmann/Getty ImagesThe American Occupation (1915-34)The politics of slavery and racial prejudice were key factors in early American hostility to Haiti. After the Haitian Revolution, Thomas Jefferson and many in Congress feared that the newly founded Black republic would spread slave revolts in the United States.For decades, the United States refused to formally recognize Haiti’s independence from France, and at times tried to annex Haitian territory and conduct diplomacy through threats.It was against this backdrop that Haiti became increasingly unstable. The country went through seven presidents between 1911 and 1915, all either assassinated or removed from power. Haiti was heavily in debt, and Citibank — then the National City Bank of New York — and other American banks confiscated much of Haiti’s gold reserves during that period with the help of U.S. Marines.Roger L. Farnham, who managed National City Bank’s assets in Haiti, then lobbied President Woodrow Wilson for a military intervention to stabilize the country and force the Haitian government to pay its debts, convincing the president that France or Germany might invade if America did not.The military occupation that followed remains one of the darkest chapters of American policy in the Caribbean. The United States installed a puppet regime that rewrote Haiti’s constitution and gave America control over the country’s finances. Forced labor was used for construction and other work to repay debts. Thousands were killed by U.S. Marines.The occupation ended in 1934 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy. As the last Marines departed Haiti, riots broke out in Port-au-Prince, the capital. Bridges were destroyed, telephone lines were cut and the new president declared martial law and suspended the constitution. The United States did not completely relinquish control of Haiti’s finances until 1947.François Duvalier, top, and his son Jean-Claude, bottom, were both dictators who presented themselves as anti-communist to gain the support of the United States.Agence France–Presse/ Getty ImagesThe Duvalier DynastyThe ruthless dictator François Duvalier took power in 1957, as Fidel Castro led a revolution in Cuba and as U.S. interests in the region were becoming increasingly focused on limiting the influence of the Soviet Union.Duvalier, like many other dictators in the Caribbean and Latin America, recognized that he could secure American support if he presented his government as anti-communist. U.S. officials privately described Duvalier as “the worst dictator in the hemisphere,” while deeming him preferable to the perceived risk of a communist Haiti.When the United States suspended aid programs because of atrocities committed soon after Duvalier took office, the Haitian leader hired public relations firms, including one run by Roosevelt’s youngest son, to repair the relationship.Duvalier — and later his son Jean-Claude — ultimately enjoyed significant American support in the form of aid (much of it embezzled by the family), training for Haitian paramilitary forces who would go on to commit atrocities and even a Marine deployment in 1959 despite the protests of American diplomats in Haiti.By 1961, the United States was sending Duvalier $13 million in aid a year — equivalent to half of Haiti’s national budget.Even after the United States had tired of Duvalier’s brutality and unstable leadership, President John F. Kennedy demurred on a plot to remove him and mandate free elections. When Duvalier died nearly a decade later, the United States supported the succession of his son. By 1986, the United States had spent an estimated $900 million supporting the Duvalier dynasty as Haiti plunged deeper into poverty and corruption.President Jovenel Moïse, who was assassinated in July, ruled Haiti by decree and turned to authoritarian tactics with the tacit approval of the Trump and Biden administrations.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesFavored CandidatesAt crucial moments in Haiti’s democratic era, the United States has intervened to pick winners and losers — fearful of political instability and surges of Haitian migration.After Mr. Aristide was ousted in 1991, the U.S. military reinstalled him. He resigned in disgrace less than a decade later, but only after American diplomats urged him to do so. According to reports from that time, the George W. Bush administration had undermined Mr. Aristide’s government in the years before his resignationFrançois Pierre-Louis is a political science professor at Queens College in New York who served in Mr. Aristide’s cabinet and advised former Prime Minister Jacques-Édouard Alexis. Haitians are often suspicious of American involvement in their affairs, he said, but still take signals from U.S. officials seriously because of the country’s long history of influence over Haitian politics.For example, after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, American and other international diplomats pressured Haiti to hold elections that year despite the devastation. The vote was disastrously mismanaged, and international observers and many Haitians considered the results illegitimate.Responding to the allegations of voter fraud, American diplomats insisted that one candidate in the second round of the presidential election be replaced with a candidate who received fewer votes — at one point threatening to halt aid over the dispute. Hillary Clinton, then the secretary of state, confronted then-President René Préval about putting Michel Martelly, America’s preferred candidate, on the ballot. Mr. Martelly won that election in a landslide.A direct line of succession can be traced from that election to Haiti’s current crisis.Mr. Martelly endorsed Jovenel Moïse as his successor. Mr. Moïse, who was elected in 2016, ruled by decree and turned to authoritarian tactics with the tacit approval of the Trump and Biden administrations.Mr. Moïse appointed Ariel Henry as acting prime minister earlier this year. Then on July 7, Mr. Moïse was assassinated.Mr. Henry has been accused of being linked to the assassination plot, and political infighting that had quieted after international diplomats endorsed his claim to power has reignited. Mr. Martelly, who had clashed with Mr. Moïse over business interests, is considering another run for the presidency.Robert Maguire, a Haiti scholar and retired professor of international affairs at George Washington University, said the instinct in Washington to back members of Haiti’s political elite who appeared allied with U.S. interests was an old one, with a history of failure.Another approach could have more success, according to Mr. Maguire and other scholars, Democratic lawmakers and a former U.S. envoy for Haiti policy. They say the United States should support a grass-roots commission of civic leaders, who are drafting plans for a new provisional government in Haiti.That process, however, could take years. More