Things have been grim in Haiti for a long time. Haitians lived, barely, through a devastating earthquake and the cholera epidemic that followed. Almost 60 percent of Haitians live on less than $2 a day. Food, water and fuel are scarce. Elections are chronically shady; gang violence brutal; kidnappings, money-laundering and arms trafficking commonplace.​ In 2024 alone, Haiti had three prime ministers; thousands of people were killed; and – despite the fact that the United States spent $600 million on law enforcement efforts to squelch violence and restore order – the international airport was closed twice for extended periods due to threats from armed gangs (this got so bad that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration barred American aircraft from flying under 10,000 feet in Haitian airspace so they wouldn’t be shot).

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It’s been tough from the start. Haiti won its independence in 1804, when both enslaved and free people rebelled against their French colonial masters. Since that time, Haiti has endured several brutal dictators. Two of the worst were François Duvalier (“Papa Doc”) and his son Jean-Claude Duvalier (“Baby Doc”). Although Jean-Bertrand Aristide won Haiti’s first free democratic election in 1990, he was derailed twice by military coup d’états.

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On July 7, 2021, Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in his home. In the months before, the country had been split on the fate of Moïse. At the heart of the dispute was the date Moïse’s presidential term was officially over. His supporters said that, thanks to a disputed election, there was one more year on his term. Opposition leaders said that Moïse’s term ended on February 7, 2021, four years after he took office. When the opposition attempted to swear in a new president, Moïse and his supporters decried their actions as a coup.

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During his tenure, Moïse dissolved Parliament, undermined the judicial system and other institutions, and ruled by decree. Before his death, many Haitians accused Moïse and his cronies of stealing millions of oil dollars and, in December 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department issued sanctions on two top government officials and a gang leader for a 2018 anti-government gathering that left over seventy Haitians dead. Even still, many Haitians didn’t care for Moïse’s successor, Ariel Henry. During Henry’s three-year tenure, killings and kidnappings by armed gangs escalated and, in February 2024, rival gangs joined forces, wreaked holy terror throughout the country, and threw him out of office.

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With help from the United States and Caribbean countries, Haiti then put a nine-member transitional presidential council in place to rule the country, naming a former U.N. official, Garry Conille, interim prime minister. The Council soon fired Conille – unleashing yet another barrage of gang violence – and replaced him with Alix Didier Fils-Aimé. Conille responded by saying that his removal was “nothing more than a maneuver that further weakens our country and seriously compromises our chances of overcoming the crisis.”

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Haiti is the definition of a failed state. Practically everything about the country needs to be reformed, and the United States must continue to engage not only for the safety of the Haitian people, but to protect our national security interests in the region. It’s important to remember that Haiti is less than 700 miles from the shoreline of Florida. The last thing we need is a failed state run by violent drug warlords – who now control an estimated 80 percent of the country – that close to our border.