Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who had traveled to Kenya to finalize security cooperation agreements, found himself unable to return to Haiti as the gang offensive had closed the airport and neighboring Dominican Republic barred his aircraft from landing, citing the lack of a required flight plan. Henry’s plane circled above the region before eventually diverting to Puerto Rico, where the US government indicated he was welcome to remain temporarily.
The image of Haiti’s prime minister stranded outside his own country while gangs ran wild in the capital was one of the most surreal and symbolically devastating moments of the entire crisis. A leader unable to return to the country he was supposed to govern, trapped in Puerto Rico while criminal networks broadcast their takeover of Port-au-Prince on social media, embodied the total collapse of state authority in ways that no abstract description could match.
The US State Department said Henry was “returning to the country” and that it was “important that he do so” — but could not specify how that would happen given the airport closure and Dominican Republic’s refusal to allow his plane to land. The diplomatic awkwardness of American statements defending a leader they had supported for years who was now visibly incapable of governing his own country was palpable.
Haitian civil society organizations that had spent years calling for Henry’s removal noted the bitter irony: the man they had argued should step down was now effectively removed from governance by the gang violence that his government had failed to address. The crisis had resolved the question of Henry’s legitimacy in the most dramatic and humiliating fashion imaginable.