A U.N. embargo prohibits the shipment of firearms to the beleaguered Caribbean nation. But that’s no problem for the gangs.
A member of the G9 Family and Allies federation of gangs in the Delmas 3 area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in February. PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When Walder St. Louis entered the Miami pawnshop in October 2021, his shopping list contained just a few items: Two AK-47s and an AR-15.
U.S. authorities seized some of the guns in the 400 Mawozo plot before they could be smuggled, and Joly, St. Louis and two others pleaded guilty to federal gunrunning conspiracy charges. The gang would soon gain notoriety for kidnapping 17 American and Canadian missionaries. “There’s got to be much, much more vigorous enforcement of the arms embargo by everybody, but certainly the United States,” he said, “because if the gangs don’t have guns or bullets, they lose their power.”Nearly 85 percent of guns found at crime scenes in Haiti and submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2021, the most recent year for which data was available, were traced to the United States. In the Bahamas in 2022, that figure was 98 percent.
Traffickers are taking advantage of Miami’s “break-bulk” port, a miles-long stretch of the Miami River lined with freighters that carry cargo that’s broken into individual items rather than transported in containers. Haitians in Florida use them to send rice, beans and other supplies home to loved ones.When the freighters are loaded up, Salisbury said, they resemble a “giant, floating secondhand store” — and are notoriously difficult to search.
Some guns arrive in Haiti via the country’s porous land border with the Dominican Republic. The U.N. also identified 11 “clandestine” airstrips here that are “rarely patrolled.” Garry Jean Baptiste, an adviser to the National Syndicate of Haitian Police union, said the understaffed, underequipped coast guard can go months without patrolling the waters. But uncontrolled seas, he warned, “could lead us to catastrophe.”
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