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March 12, 2024

Is Joe Biden ready for a big Haitian migrant flotilla?

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With the collapse of Haiti, the Biden administration has whipped out $300 million for an international aid effort, which like all the other ones, will probably go to beltway consultant contracts.

But true to form, it's doing very little about an expected migrant flotilla that is very likely to happen, even though it has authority to do so.

Witness this exchange between Rep. Matt Gaetz and three Pentagon officials associated with the region:

My transcription:

GAETZ: ...we can't really tell because the gangs are in charge, the government has been thrown out, and as a Florida man, I'm deeply concerned about this wave of people that we're about to have, that we are having, coming from Haiti, and it will accelerate. 'Cuz I've gone to Opa Locka and I've spent time with the folks that engaged in Operation Vigilant Century, and they say the number one push factor that drives these Haitians into Broward County, Palm Beach County, where they don't disperse throughout the country, they stay in southeast Florida, that that driving factor is the deterioration of conditions in Haiti. So, what are we doing to prepare for that wave and to ensure that these people are not paroled into the United States as the administration has done with people on the Southern border, but instead are repatriated back at the dock at Port-au-Prince?

ZIMMERMAN: Uh, congressman, we're doing a number of things to ensure that we're keeping track of the situation and we're prepared. At the moment, we have not yet seen large numbers, what we would characterize as a maritime mass migration. Umm, but (counterchatter) we are alert to that possibility. I think you're right that the driving conditions in Haiti could very well press more people. So, uh, we recently approved some additional assistance that we could provide to the Coast Guard, I, I, think that that has now fully been approved, we'll be providing notifications if we haven't already. Uh, uh, we'll provide shipboard assistance ...

GAETZ:  Because I've talked to the Coast Guard and what they say would really support them would be more Naval vessels, would be DoD support. And because I think you correctly said there is an anticipated mass migration here, there are specific legal authorities that we can access, that I would implore you to access: Specifically, George W. Bush signed Executive Order, uh, 13276, and in that executive order, there is the ability for any president to designate an anticipated mass migration, and then get gray-hull Naval vessels into the Straits of Florida to deter that migration and then to repatriate those people before they get to Florida. 

Notice how empty that room is even as a major crisis is about to hit the southeast United States with a new mass migration event. Gaetz is doing his job, but W-T-F is the rest of Congress?

Zimmerman appears to be Rebecca Zimmerman, whose Pentagon bio suggests she has her job in a temporary or provisional capacity: 

Rebecca Zimmerman is Performing the Duties of the Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs. She is also the Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs.
She doesn't do much about the southern border, so it's doubtful she's going to do anything about a Haitian mass migration event, either. 
 
Now, it may not be within her authority to put out "gray hull" Naval ships to turn a flotilla back -- it sounds like the kind of command Joe Biden has to give, and won't. 
 
But it does suggest an inadequate response is in the works from the Biden administration. Her response is pretty mealy-mouthed in terms of what is being done to stop a mass-migration flotilla (Shipboard assistance? What's that?) And Gaetz should have let her flesh out what she meant.
 
But he obviously wasn't getting the answer he was driving at which was an effective Naval response to a mass migration event from Haiti, which was why he jumped in.
 
I would have liked to have heard more of the exchange, because this is a pretty vital front-burner issue right now.
 
It's also complicated -- it's not like the lower middle class country-shopping exodus at the border, driven by cartel organizational muscle and profits, with more than 100 countries shipping their illegals on fake asylum claims. It is a specific emergency that requires provisions for refugees who, as real refugees, are willing to take any port in a storm (and yes, we are a first country of refuge), and who are willing to go back to their home countries when it's safe. Biden needs to be on the phone with every leader in the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America for an orderly plan to offer refuge to the terrified, a regional effort from all countries with a security interest in Haiti's stability needs to be brought in to help the people fleeing gunfire, street burnings, gang barbarism, and quite possibly cannibals in their home country. Gaetz is very right to be focusing on this issue proactively but I differ from him in the regard that anyone fleeing by sea needs to be returned to Haiti as if they were some kind of miscreant or welfare-shopper. 
 
Still, it's important to note that had Joe Biden not wantonly opened the border to all comers on those fake asylum claims, allowing as many as 20 million people in, bankrupting cities, and creating a vast NGO migrant industrial complex with an interest in perpetuating mass illegal migration, there wouldn't be the intense desire to prevent Haitians from entering the U.S. under this current emergency. Biden shot his wad on migrants, and in Florida, the sentiment is, 'no more' and 'we are full up.'
 
Now a real emergency is in the offing and Biden looks genuinely unprepared. None of this will stop a mass flotilla of refugees rolling into the U.S. with no control of who's getting in.
 
Do we have a list of countries that will take in refugees? Doesn't look like it? Better still, do we have a plan to create secure zones inside Haiti itself with the international expedition sponsored by the UN that seems to be in the works? It should not be dismissed that the safe zones could actually be created in Haiti to prevent a flotilla, if a serious U.S. response is made to stop the gangsters. 
 
El Salvador has offered to solve the problem from its root, doing in Haiti what they did in short order in their own country if the UN is willing, throwing every bad guy in jail, and laying down authentic rule of law for law-abiding people to enjoy peace and security from. That offer ought to be taken seriously, because El Salvador would like to show the world what it can do to solve these kinds of problems. But of course, Joe Biden isn't even speaking to the president of El Salvador. He'd rather just dump a new migrant/refugee crisis onto Florida and have Florida pay for it.
 
That's why it's good to see Gaetz on the job and exposing the Biden administration's failure to prepare. That's not a good thing, but it allows Florida to be prepared for the next Biden foreign policy disaster about to slap the American people.
 
Image: Twitter screen shot 
 
 
 
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