Haiti has now entered a metaphorical Hall of Failed States, where it can be alphabetically exhibited between Congo and Libya. Now, a Florida Keys-bound refugee flotilla of rickety sail boats—ever the irresistible love object of news video cameras—is taking form as a kind of torpedo heading at President Joe Biden’s November re-election ambitions.
But whether the administration heads off the ships at sea or lets thousands of Haitian immigrants mar the waterfront views of wealthy Floridian vacation homeowners, most Americans should know the bitterly ironic backstory of how Biden himself essentially ordered up Haiti’s current post-apocalyptic fate and now stands to reap what he sowed politically.
Haiti’s deep underlying problems certainly long predate Biden’s presidency. But he was the one who signed, sealed, and delivered the Haitian state’s final execution orders. More specifically, as reporting in my 2023 book Overrun reveals, he did it in the months of September and October 2021, when 15,000 Haitians suddenly showed up in Del Rio, Texas, as a major political problem for Democrats ahead of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections.
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