U.S. to designate Haiti gangs as foreign terrorists, opening way to use Salvador prison

[Eugene]

Source: Miami Herald

U.S. to designate Haiti gangs as foreign terrorists, opening way to use Salvador prison

Jacqueline Charles
Fri, April 18, 2025 at 12:26 PM EDT·8 min read

Haitian gangs and individuals financing and arming them could soon find themselves labeled as “terrorists” and imprisoned in El Salvador’s notorious maximum-security prison, the same facility the Trump administration has been sending alleged members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, the Miami Herald has learned.

The U.S. State Department, which earlier this year designated the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and seven other criminal groups as foreign terrorist organizations, is working on issuing the same designation, or a less severe category —“specially designated global terrorist”— to leaders and members of Haiti’s powerful Viv Ansanm gang coalition, and the Gran Grif armed group operating in the country’s rural Artibonite region..

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who spent a significant amount of time speaking with Caribbean leaders about Haiti’s deepening instability during a visit last month to Jamaica, believes that the ongoing violence, which has left 1 million Haitians one step away from famine and more than a million internally displaced, is both a threat to regional security and U.S. interests. The terrorist designation would extend U.S. jurisdiction to anyone assisting the gangs, from gun and ammunition traffickers to government officials in Haiti financing the groups. Anyone found guilty of assisting the gangs would be regarded as “terrorists” and face harsher penalties, including counter-terrorism sanctions.

“For too long the enablers of Haiti’s brutal gangs, in the U.S., Colombia and elsewhere have gotten away with impunity, but they will now be faced with the criminal consequences of providing material support to terrorism,” a senior State Department official told the Herald. “This includes scenarios where Haitian gang leaders and members could end up at CECOT, alongside fellow designated terrorists from MS-13 and Tren de Aragua.”

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Read more: https://news.yahoo.com/news/u-designate-haiti-gangs-foreign-162640878.html