Florida didn’t see flood of migrants from Haiti

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The predictions were dire: Florida was on the verge of experiencing an onslaught of refugees from Haiti, driven by widespread gang-fueled lawlessness to make the perilous overwater voyage of hundreds of miles seeking safety in the U.S.

Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered the mobilization of Florida personnel and equipment to supplement the federal response from the Coast Guard and other agencies.

“Given the situation in Haiti,” the governor declared in his mid-March announcement, he ordered more than 250 law enforcement officers, National Guard members and soldiers from several state agencies to South Florida and the Keys. Such actions are necessary, his office said, “when a state faces the possibility of invasion.”

A month later, it turns out there hasn’t been an invasion — or a noticeable change in Haitians arriving in Florida by boat. There isn’t agreement about why it didn’t come to pass.

In March, DeSantis reiterated the warning about what could be on the way to Florida in a Fox News appearance and told a conservative podcast host he might send Haitian refugees arriving in Florida to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., the way he did with Venezuelan asylum-seekers in 2022.

Democratic elected officials were also concerned. A week after DeSantis’ move, all the Democrats in the Florida congressional delegation warned about “the potential mass migration from Haiti to Florida.”

Their priority — advancing funding for a multinational security force for Haiti — was different, but they said action was needed to “help keep the Haitian people safe and Florida secure.”

NO SURGE

The surge never happened.

“There’s no mass exodus,” said Ronald Surin, a former vice president of the Haitian Lawyers Association, an assessment shared in interviews with other Haitian American community leaders and elected officials in South Florida.

“We have not seen any Haitians coming over here,” said state Rep. Marie Woodson, a Hollywood Democrat.

MarieGuerda Nicolas, a psychologist and professor in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Miami, is co-founder and president of the Ayiti Community Trust, a community foundation in Haiti.

“People in Haiti right now are not necessarily saying, ‘How do I get a boat to come to Miami?’ That’s not what people in Haiti are thinking about at all,” Nicolas said.

That does not mean the situation in Haiti has improved in the past month.

“Nothing has really changed. There has not been any peace,” said Surin, a Fort Lauderdale immigration lawyer and president of the Haitian American Democratic Club of Broward County. “People are still being kidnapped and women raped, housing destroyed, police stations and medical facilities, banks and all of those are still under control of gang violence.”

“The gangs remain very powerful,” he said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, whose agencies include the Coast Guard, said via a spokesperson it is monitoring the situation.

“At this time, irregular migration flows through the Caribbean remain low. All irregular migration journeys, especially maritime routes, are extremely dangerous, unforgiving, and often result in loss of life,” an agency spokesperson said via email.

DeSantis himself acknowledged the absence of a surge.

“We have not seen a real strong, really any, uptick in vessels trying to come from Haiti to Florida,” he said on April 8 during one of his regular soliloquies criticizing President Joe Biden’s immigration and border policies.

DESANTIS’ CREDIT?

DeSantis took some credit for the surge that didn’t materialize. The governor said his deployment of personnel and more than a dozen watercraft and aircraft played a deterrent role when combined with the Coast Guard.

“It’s not like you’re gonna be able to get through that,” he said.

DeSantis said the state has “worked well with the Coast Guard,” but said it is understaffed, asserting the Biden administration “hasn’t provided enough resources.”

Overall, though, DeSantis said Haitians have gotten a message: Don’t try to make the voyage to Florida, because you’ll be stopped.

Haitian American Democrats said DeSantis’ moves had no effect on anyone who might have contemplated the 700-mile trip to Florida.

“The people on the coast do not pay any attention to what the governor of Florida does before they leave on a boat,” Surin said, dismissing the deployment of state forces offshore as meaningless.

Other Haitian American Democrats excoriated DeSantis.

“Despite the Governor’s anti-immigrant grandstanding, there has not been a significant surge of Haitians fleeing the island. The assertion that there would be a surge was either politically motivated fear mongering, or miscalculated conjecture,” state Rep. Dotie Joseph, a North Miami Democrat, said via text. “Many Haitians impacted by the violence in the capital are internally displaced to other areas within the country which are not currently dominated by the so-called gangs.”

Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, was critical of DeSantis — and of the Biden administration for not denouncing DeSantis and doing more federally to help Haitians.

“Florida’s response to what is happening is a shameless attack on Haitians by Governor DeSantis stating the need to protect Florida against an invasion of Haitians,” she said Thursday in a telephone news conference.