Haiti condemns Trump’s “racist” comments on migrants, United States News & Top Stories

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PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Haiti has denounced former US President Donald Trump’s “racist” remarks that migrants from the island nation entering the United States put Americans at risk of contracting AIDS.

“So we have hundreds of thousands of people coming from Haiti. Haiti has a huge AIDS problem,” Trump said in an interview Thursday on Fox News.

“A lot of these people will probably have AIDS, and they come into our country and we don’t do anything about it, we let everyone in,” he said.

“It’s like a death wish for our country.”

According to World Bank data, HIV prevalence in Haiti has been declining steadily over the past 15 years and is now estimated at 1.9% among Haitians aged 15 to 49.

The Haitian Embassy in Washington condemned Donald J Trump’s “racist and baseless statement on Haitian migrants, in particular, and the Haitian population in general”.

“These vile comments are only intended to sow hatred and discord against immigrants,” the embassy said in a statement Friday (October 8th).

The arrival in mid-September of more than 30,000 migrants, mostly Haitians, who camped for days under a bridge on the border between Mexico and Texas, put the administration of US President Joe Biden under the fire of the republicans.

They accuse the president of causing the wave by relaxing the intransigent migration policies implemented by his predecessor Trump.

In less than three weeks, more than 7,500 Haitian migrants – 20% of whom are children – were expelled by the American migration services, which chartered 70 planes to the capital Port-au-Prince and to Cap-Haitien, the second largest city on the island.

After Trump’s remarks, the Haitian Embassy declared that “civilized people … should not remain indifferent to this umpteenth denigration of the Haitian people by former President Trump”.

In a private meeting in January 2018, Trump called Haiti and several African countries “shitty countries.”

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