Spiraling Haiti violence and airline shutdowns cut families off from adoptive kids

[November 14, 2024]  By MEGAN JANETSKY

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The last words Michelle Reed heard from her 6-year-old adopted son, Esai Reed, in early November were: “Mom, come get me.”

But after U.S. aviation authorities on Tuesday blocked airlines from traveling to Haiti for 30 days following the shooting of a number of planes by gangs, 51-year-old Reed is once again cut off from her adoptive son, who lives in an orphanage in Haiti waiting for paperwork to go through a bureaucratic process hamstrung by Haiti's spiraling crisis.

As violence once again explodes in the Caribbean nation, Reed worries that Esai may never make it to his new home in Florida, where his two biological brothers wait to reunite with him.

“Our kids sit in Haiti with no way out,” Reed told the Associated Press on Wednesday. “It’s a fear that I feel because I just don’t know if he’ll come home. I don’t know if he’ll survive this.”

Reed is one of dozens of families cut off from their adoptive children, and many more worried about their loved ones on the island – one of the rippling humanitarian consequences that the recent surge of violence and political turmoil have had in Haiti this week.

The chaos began over the weekend when a transitional council, created to restore democratic order to Haiti, fired the interim prime minister, Garry Conille, who had been at odds with the council. When Haiti swore in his replacement, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, on Monday, gangs once again took advantage of the chaos to make power grabs.

Gangs shot at three different planes of U.S. airlines – Spirit, JetBlue and American Airlines – landing and taking off in the capital, Port-au-Prince, 85% of which is controlled by gangs, according to United Nations estimates. One flight attendant was injured, and bullets riddled the Spirit airplane.

As a result, the Federal Aviation Administration restricted U.S. airline s from flying to Haiti for 30 days, and American Airlines announced it would pause flights until February. The United Nations also said it was temporarily suspending flights to Port-au-Prince, slashing access to humanitarian aid and personel in the country.

Meanwhile, firefights broke out across the city, and gangs began to burn homes in upper-class areas. Streets were left empty, and schools, banks and government facilities closed.

Such violent outbursts have forced kids like Reed's adoptive son – who has been evacuated from his orphanage three times – into even more precarious situations.

The airline restrictions have left Haiti once against isolated from much of the world and with only a trickle of the humanitarian assistance it needs as the Caribbean nation teeters on the brink of famine.

“We call for an end to the escalating violence, to allow for safe, sustained and unimpeded humanitarian access," U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the crisis continued to grip Port-au-Prince. Schools were closed and gunfire could be heard on the streets.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on Wednesday also reported that a mix of police and vigilante groups had attacked one of their ambulances, slashing tires, tear gassing medical staff and executing at least two wounded patients.

Police officers patrol near the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

“This act is a shocking display of violence, both for the patients and for MSF medical personnel, and it seriously calls into question MSF’s ability to continue delivering essential care to the Haitian population, which is in dire need,” said Christophe Garnier, the head of the organization's Haiti mission, in a statement.

Meanwhile, Reed wakes up every morning with a gnawing feeling in her gut, worried that it will be the day she receives a call saying her 6-year-old adoptive Haitian son has been attacked or killed by the country’s gangs.

Reed is part of a group of families in an extended fight with the U.S. State Department and Haitian authorities to get their children out of Haiti, asking the U.S. government to grant humanitarian parole for some 70 children they're adopting.

It was an opportunity the U.S. granted to more than a dozen other children earlier this year when gangs attacked key government infrastructure and forced Haiti’s main international airport to close for nearly three months, prompting evacuations of dozens of U.S. citizens and 39 children from March to May who had final adoption decrees.

But families like Reed's say they feel helpless and a mix of crisis in Haiti, and a tangle of American and Haitian bureaucracy have blocked efforts to get their children passports to leave, despite Reed already being referred to as “mom” by Esai, who shares her last name.

In addition to periodic evacuations, Reed said the director of the orphanage where her son is living has since left the country, leaving him in the hands of a number of trusted contractors. She's had minimal contact with her son, hoping to speak to him in the coming days, and is unable to visit to make sure he is okay both because of the flights and the violence breaking out.

Despite having to pay hospital bills and funeral arrangements if anything happens to him, she's still not legally permitted to move her Esai to a safer part of Haiti or to the U.S.

The U.S. government did not immediately respond to request for comment by the AP, but has previously told Reed and other parents in letters that “despite intensive efforts,” it had not found a solution to allow children without adoption decrees to leave Haiti and enter the U.S.

It told the AP in September that it “understands and empathizes with the concerns and frustration of U.S. families adopting from Haiti.”

Meanwhile, Reed and other families anxiously wait for more news as they watch violence in Haiti spiral.

“All we ask for is that the U.S. government work with the Haitian government to get these children to safety and with their adoptive families," she said. “We just want our children to survive.”

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Associated Press journalist Evens Sanon contributed to this story from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

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