Former police officer Jimmy "Barbecue" Cherizier, and leader of an alliance of armed groups, walks past journalists in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on March 11, 2024. File photo credit Reuters/Ralph Tedy Erol.
WASHINGTON, DC--The United States on Friday designated Haiti's powerful Viv Ansanm gang alliance, whose members have taken control of almost all the capital Port-au-Prince and spread to surrounding areas, a "transnational terrorist group".
The US Treasury Department also applied the designation to the Gran Grif gang, which in October took responsibility for a shocking massacre of at least 115 people in the agricultural town of Pont-Sonde.
"They are a direct threat to US national security interests in our region," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, adding that providing material support or resources to the gangs could lead to "criminal charges and inadmissibility or removal from the United States".
The gang conflict in Haiti has been met with little international response, while neighbouring countries, including the US, have continued to deport migrants back to the Caribbean nation despite United Nations pleas not to due to humanitarian concerns.
Over one million people have been displaced by the conflict, and tens of thousands more in recent weeks, as the violence has spread to central Haiti, forcing more health facilities to shut their doors and pushing more people into severe food insecurity.
Frozen US funding for security efforts and the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, as well as other cuts, also complicate the situation.
The latest designations come after the US in February designated Venezuela's Tren de Aragua gang, alongside a number of other organised crime groups across Latin America, including Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, as global terrorist organisations.
The US government later invoked a rarely used wartime act to designate Tren de Aragua as "alien enemies", resulting in the deportation without due process of many Venezuelans to a controversial prison in El Salvador, which is being paid to hold them.
It was unclear what, if any, impact the terrorist designation would have regarding Haiti.
Armed groups in Haiti have made significant gains in the first part of 2025, as an under-resourced, UN-backed security mission has stalled, and along with police has been unable to hold off advances of the heavily-armed and well-funded gangs.
The UN has called for tougher measures to prevent guns being trafficked to the Haitian gangs, especially from the US, which it said was the major source of illegal firearms in Haiti via ports in Florida.
Luckson Elan, who heads Gran Grif, and Jimmy Cherizier, who acts as spokesman for the Viv Ansanm alliance that is seeking political representation in Haiti, are both subject to UN sanctions. ~ Reuters ~
