As Title 42 ends on Thursday, the Biden administration is imposing new restrictions on migration at the U.S.-Mexico border. Among other things, a new regulation would bar asylum to those who enter the United States if they have traveled through another country without first seeking asylum there.
This latest episode in governmental efforts to “secure” the border is another phase in a number of misguided policies that not only expose our nation’s failed immigration system, but also reveal the deep historical legacies of the U.S. government’s racist, imperialistic foreign policies. This pattern becomes particularly apparent when we consider that President Biden’s strategies overwhelmingly target Haitians.
Although the Biden administration provides a narrow pathway for select Haitians to seek entry into the United States, nearly 27,000 Haitian asylum seekers have been remanded into U.S. custody and returned to Haiti since Biden’s inauguration, creating the largest mass expulsion of asylum seekers in modern American history.
The current anti-Haitian immigration policies are rooted in historical practices and assumptions more than two centuries old. In 1804, formerly enslaved rebels ousted French colonial rule, declared their independence and birthed the first sovereign Black nation in the Western Hemisphere. Ever since that time, White Western powers, such as the United States, have worked deliberately to demonize and undermine a nation that shattered white-supremacist ideas by asserting Black people’s fundamental human right to liberty and self-governance.
When Haitian leaders issued the Haitian Act of Independence in 1804, they forever altered the meanings and conceptions of liberty in the Atlantic World. Haiti became the first and only country in the Americas where enslaved Africans threw off their shackles, fought for their freedom, defeated European powers, established their own nation and swore to defend their freedom and independence until their last breath.
Immediately, frightened, angry White people across the globe lashed out against the courageous Black people who eradicated slavery and established their own country. Terrified that the spirit of rebellion would be infectious enough to afflict their fledgling, slaveholding nations, White people across the Atlantic World conspired to destroy Haiti, crush its independence and ensure that an independent Black nation could never thrive.
In 1825, France imposed a devastating demand for financial reparations, known as “the indemnity,” which sent Haiti into an economic tailspin from which it has never been able to recover. Britain denied diplomatic recognition for almost 30 years, refusing to acknowledge Haiti until 1833, as part of its plan to gradually abolish slavery throughout their Caribbean colonies.
Meanwhile, the United States attempted a brief economic embargo between 1806 and 1810, but eventually resumed trade relations due to the embargo’s deleterious effects on the U.S. economy. Even so, for almost 60 years, between 1804 and 1862, the U.S. government refused to recognize Haiti’s sovereignty and extend formal diplomatic recognition to the Black nation. During much of that time, opposition to Haitian recognition was overwhelming and spread across regional and party lines. Southern politicians insisted that Haitian independence could never be acknowledged because Haiti’s very existence plunged a dagger into the heart of slavery. Northern politicians objected on the grounds that Black ambassadors could never be allowed to interact with U.S. political leaders on an equal basis.
U.S. politicians also began hatching a new scheme. Carefully cultivating an image of Haiti as a “failed state,” they sought to assert control over the Black nation and reimpose slavery. Their clever machinations persisted for almost two decades, but did not fully come into fruition until the early 20th century.
In 1862 — almost six decades after Haitian independence — Congress extended formal diplomatic recognition and acknowledged Haiti’s right to sovereignty. Amid the Civil War, absent the South’s powerful voting bloc, northern radicals pushed through a bill recognizing both Haiti and the west African nation of Liberia. But even so, the debate in Congress revealed the government’s deep and resilient attachment to slavery and White supremacy. Ultimately, Congress only agreed to acknowledge Haitian sovereignty because they believed that formal recognition would open Haiti to U.S. imperial expansion.
Following the outbreak of World War I, the U.S. government became increasingly obsessed with Haiti and used the burgeoning global conflict to justify intervention, eventually seizing control over Haiti politically and economically. Arguing that Germany presented a significant threat to peace and safety in the region, President Woodrow Wilson resurrected the nearly 100-year-old Monroe Doctrine to justify sending military troops to invade the Black republic. Insisting that Haiti suffered from chronic “instability,” U.S. political leaders insisted that the United States must act to prevent Germany’s incursion into sovereign American territory.
It quickly became clear, however, that financial interests, rather than political concerns, drove U.S. intervention. Fears about Germany’s expansion into the region had been highly inflated, and U.S. military intervention proved unwarranted. But the United States still brutally occupied Haiti for nearly two decades, from 1915 to 1934, and successfully installed a political and economic system that served U.S. financial interests.
During its occupation, the U.S. government rewrote Haiti’s constitution, controlled the nation’s customs, collected taxes, forced chain gangs to construct roads and operated most governmental institutions, all of which benefited the United States in significant ways. The U.S. government also extended its control over the nation’s finances, requiring Haiti to accept a debt consolidation loan to pay off its international debt incurred as the result of the 1825 indemnity.
In so doing, Haiti exchanged one master for another. It now had new creditors — the U.S. government and U.S. banks — which made a fortune off the loan arrangement. U.S. troops finally withdrew from Haiti in 1934, but the U.S. government ruthlessly retained fiscal control over the country until 1947.
As the Cold War commenced, the U.S. government continued its interference in Haiti with devastating consequences. From 1957 to 1986, the United States repeatedly endorsed and propped up the Duvalier regime, which ruled the nation with an iron fist. Throughout that era, Haitians suffered under dictators François “Papa Doc” and Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, a father and son team that openly murdered their political opponents and stole millions of dollars from the Haitian treasury.
The U.S. government ignored the Duvalier regime’s violence, corruption and human rights violations — and even provided formal training to the Tonton Macoute, their brutal paramilitary force — all because of the economic opportunities Haiti offered American businesses.
During the 1980s, U.S. policies drove Haiti’s economy into a devastating downward spiral. Although the United States caused the economic crisis, the U.S. government would not allow Haitians to escape it as Ronald Reagan’s administration imposed a punitive crackdown on Haitian asylum seekers. This deadly cycle continued under the next five U.S. presidents, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. For decades, Haitians who sought refuge in the United States were captured at sea and either returned to Haiti or remanded to detention centers in Florida or Guantánamo Bay.
There was a brief reprieve following the devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti in 2010, when the United States, under Obama, granted temporary protected status (TPS) to Haitians already residing in the United States. But just a few years later, nearly 5,000 Haitian migrants were detained by ICE, as the United States gradually increased its deportation practices. Soon, immigration facilities became so overcrowded that migrants were sent to criminal jails to await deportation.
Which brings us back to Biden’s mass expulsions and efforts to block asylum seekers. But renewed attempts to “secure the border” and impose more stringent immigration policies can’t remedy what the U.S. government has broken. Instead, Americans must reckon with the role that the United States and other Western nations have played in undermining Haitian sovereignty. Most of all, the White Western world must right its historical wrongs and collectively decide to stop fearing the ascendance of a truly sovereign Black republic.