Haiti is experiencing a multidimensional crisis. This "complicated" situation will not be resolved overnight, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said on Saturday during an intervention in Las Vegas as part of a convention of journalists from minorities, reads an article in the Miami Herald.
"There is no easy answer," she continued. "And it's going to take time to understand everything and it's not just the United States," according to Karine Jean Pierre. "I've known this president for a very long time. It's very personal for him. He cares about the population and we're going to continue to work with the State Department and our national security team... It's just going to take time."
"It's a very complicated geopolitical situation that we're dealing with," she said. "There is no big answer, except that we must do everything we can to help the Haitian people."
Jean-Pierre said the United States provided humanitarian aid and had conversations with its embassy in Port-au-Prince, which today is located near the stronghold of two powerful gangs.
Ms. Jean-Pierre praised Mr. Biden's commitment to Haiti, saying she has known him for more than a decade and traveled with him to Little Haiti during his presidential campaign, where she met with community leaders.
“I was with him when the earthquake happened in Haiti and I saw how he reacted,” she said, “and how he dealt with a community that was suffering, that was in grief".
In the first seven months of this year, the United States forcibly repatriated more than 20,000 Haitians, compared to 19,629 for all of 2021, according to statistics from the United Nations International Migration Office. Most returnees assisted by IOM previously resided in Chile or Brazil, where several thousand returnee children were born - and were returned by the United States after traveling north. The deportations from the United States, along with other recent decisions regarding Haiti, have led some to question whether Biden really cares about that country.
Casting doubt, they resurrected a clip from 1994 in which Biden, then a senator representing Delaware and discussing military intervention, said of Haiti: "If Haiti were sinking quietly into the Caribbean or s 'rise 300 feet, it wouldn't matter much in terms of interest to us."
Asked by the Miami Herald about those comments and the administration's policy of deporting Haitians, Ms. Jean-Pierre said questions about Haiti were personal to her.
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