Reps. Matt Gaetz and Carlos Giménez call for activating ’maritime mass migration’ protocols before the Sunshine State is swamped with economic refugees.
The United States has no plans to send troops to Haiti as it spirals into chaos; it also has no current plans to activate its “maritime mass migration” protocol to allow the Coast Guard and Navy to interdict illegal immigrant flotillas and return them to their point of origin or to a port in a third nation, a top Defense official says.
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs Rebecca Zimmerman was asked by Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Carlos Giménez (R-Fla.), a former Miami-Dade County mayor, about the Pentagon’s Haiti contingency plans during a March 12 House Armed Services Committee hearing on Western Hemisphere national security challenges.
“The government has been thrown out and, as a Florida man, I’m deeply concerned about this wave of people that we’re about to have coming from Haiti,” Mr. Gaetz said. He predicted that what is now a trickle leaving the island “will accelerate” in coming weeks.
South Florida’s Broward and Palm Beach counties have been prime destinations for Haitians, many arriving illegally, for years, he said. He noted that “they don’t disperse throughout the country, they stay in southeast Florida.”
South Florida is bracing for refugees fleeing Haiti to end up on its shores, Mr. Gaetz said, wondering if the Pentagon, State Department, and Department of Homeland Security, among others, are also wondering about it and planning for what many see as inevitable.
“So what are we doing to prepare for that wave and to ensure that these people are not paroled into the United States, as the administration has done with people on the southern border, but instead are repatriated back at the dock at Port-au-Prince?” he asked Ms. Zimmerman.
Congressman,” she replied, “we’re doing a number of things to ensure that we’re keeping track of the situation and we’re prepared. At the moment, we have not yet seen large numbers, what we would characterize as a ‘maritime mass migration.’ But we are alert to that possibility.”
By John Haughey
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