House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries calls on Republicans to release funds for Haiti

Jeffries says, “America must stand with the people of Haiti.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries demanded Thursday that Republican lawmakers immediately support the release of multimillion-dollar funds for Haiti because the Caribbean nation is tormented by political violence and instability.

“America must stand with the people of Haiti,” Jeffries, a Democrat from Brooklyn, told the Grio during his weekly presser. Jeffries said the cash needs to be paid on Wednesday.

Violence, deaths and kidnappings have increased in Haiti since late February as armed gang members staged attacks to take control of enormous swaths of the country and raided prisons, freeing greater than 4,000 prisoners. The attacks targeted airports, police stations and the country’s largest port, disrupting food supplies and destabilizing the lives of Haitians.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who lobbied for the U.N.-backed deployment of Kenyan cops, is barred from entering Haiti and is forced to resign, according to the Associated Press.

Democrats called on House Speaker Mike Johnson to talk to Republican Michael McCaul of Texas about releasing $40 million in security aid to ease unrest. McCaul chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

But McCaul and the rating member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, say they need more details before releasing the funds.

Last month, the Biden-Harris administration sent McCaul and Risch present their plans to help Haiti, However no Republicans have modified their position on releasing the funds.

“This is what the Republican Party is doing,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., told the Grio on Thursday. “They don’t want to send funds where they need to go, especially if they are black or brown countries… Haiti needs the funds.”

Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., said Haiti is “living through some of the most terrible times in our modern civil society.”

Unrest has escalated in Haiti as gangs looking for political power have develop into frustrated with the postponement of elections within the wake of the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

“We can’t continue to sit on the sidelines,” Clarke said.

Despite Republican efforts to block aid to Haiti, national security adviser Jake Sullivan he said at Tuesday’s White House news conference that the administration was “consulting with Congress” to provide funding.

“It is critical that a Kenyan-led multinational security force is dispatched to Haiti as quickly as possible,” Sullivan said.

On Friday, the United States welcomed making a Haitian Interim Presidential Council to quell the violence by deploying a Kenya-led Multinational Security Assistance Mission and ensuring a plan for fair elections.

“Much work lies ahead, and the United States remains committed to supporting the people of Haiti,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in an announcement.

!function(){var g=window;g.googletag=g.googletag||{},g.googletag.cmd=g.googletag.cmd||(),g.googletag.cmd.push(function(){ g.googletag.pubads().setTargeting(“film-recommended-film”,”true”)})}();

Featured Stories

The post House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries calls on Republicans to release funding for Haiti appeared first on TheGrio.