Leaders of Steelworkers Local 8751, the Boston School Bus Drivers’ Union, including President André François and Recording Secretary Claude “Toutou” St. Germain joined Jacques Piquant and other leaders of Fanmi Lavalas of Boston in the demonstration. Fanmi Lavalas is the party of the only popularly elected president in Haiti’s history, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
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Protesters spoke with great urgency about the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Ouanaminthe, a commune of 100,000 people in the region of Haiti’s Nord-Est Department, where the Massacre River forms a section of Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic.
Luis Abinader, president of the Dominican Republic, has ordered the border totally closed to all Haitian nationals, suspended visa applications and initiated daily mass deportations of Haitian people who live, work and seek medical care there. Normally, the border is open without restriction at least two days per week.
Abinader’s lockdown tactic comes as the Biden administration has placed new restrictions on Haitian people wanting to travel or migrate to the U.S. Thousands of people line up daily under the guns of the U.S. Marines at the often-closed U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince, at barbed wire military checkpoints in El Paso, Texas, and now on both sides of the Massacre River. Many Haitians are drowning in the Gulf of Mexico due to these policies.