A video that circulated widely on the internet recently showed a Haitian gang leader, Joseph Wilson, shirtless, happily showing off belts of .50 caliber ammunition, mockingly saying he used the armor-piercing bullets to groom his hair.
“We have enough combs for our hair to last a year,” he joked.
So how did he get them?
Guns are not manufactured in Haiti, and it’s illegal to ship any there, but the gangs terrorizing the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, never seem to be short of them — or of ammunition.
Experts estimate that there are about 20 armed groups operating in Port-au-Prince, some who carry AR-15 and Galil assault rifles, shotguns and Glock handguns. The United Nations estimates that between 270,000 and 500,000 firearms are circulating illegally in Haiti, with most weapons in the hands of gangs.
Their superior fire power has overwhelmed the thin ranks of Haiti’s ill-equipped police and contributed to an astonishing death toll last year of more than 5,600 homicide victims, a jump of more than 1,000 from the year before.
The United Nations imposed an arms embargo on Haiti three years ago, yet most weapons on Haiti’s streets are from the United States, where they are purchased by straw buyers and smuggled into the country by sea or sometimes by land through the Dominican Republic, according to the United Nations.
The issue has become so serious that Haiti’s government has restricted imports along its land border with the Dominican Republic. Only goods that were originally produced there are allowed; any products that didn’t originate in the Dominican Republic have to enter through Haiti’s gang-infested seaports.
As Haiti’s capital grapples with a violent crisis that threatens its very existence, questions remain about whether Haiti and other nations — including the United States — are doing enough to control the tide of weapons.
“If you stop the flow of guns and bullets, the gangs eventually, literally, run out of ammunition,” said Bill O’Neill, the U.N.’s independent human rights expert for Haiti. “That’s a quicker, faster, safer way to dismantle them.”
Where are the weapons coming from?
In short, Florida.
South Florida, including the ports of Miami and Fort Lauderdale, was the point of origin for 90 percent of Caribbean-bound shipments of illicit firearms reported between 2016 and 2023, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Gangs sometimes acquire guns and ammunition by attacking police stations in Haiti or by bribing local police officers into providing weapons. Nearly 1,000 police guns were diverted in the past four years, the U.N. said last week, and police officers have been reported to sell them on the black market.
But weapons are more typically smuggled in shipping containers and aboard freighters leaving South Florida, hidden among tightly packed jumbles of bicycles, cars, electrical goods, clothing and food.
U.N. officials and private security experts say traffickers altered their tactics in recent months to avoid increased inspections on the Miami River, a five-mile waterway that cuts through the city of Miami and has long been a hotbed for contraband.
Smugglers expanded their operations to new routes between Florida and the Dominican Republic, including Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, a large cruise ship and cargo facility, the U.N. said in a recent report.
What guns are being smuggled?
So far this year, Dominican officials have made two large seizures of smuggled firearms at the port of Haina, near the capital, Santo Domingo.
In February, Dominican Customs agents made what they described as the country’s largest seizure of weapons destined for Haiti.
Nearly two dozen firearms, including a Barrett .50 caliber semiautomatic rifle and 15 AK-47-style assault rifles, as well as 36,000 rounds were inside a container on the Sara Express, a 35-year-old freighter that runs a regular route between Miami and the Dominican Republic.
The owner of the Miami company listed on the bill of lading was arrested in the Dominican Republic.
A second shipment from New York seized in January at the same Dominican port may also have been bound for Haiti, investigators said. That shipment included 37 guns, and several Kalashnikov-style rifles with labels showing they were manufactured in Vermont and Georgia.
In November, Dominican authorities arrested several Dominican police officers accused of smuggling nearly one million rounds of ammunition from a police depot. At least one of the buyers was from Haiti, Dominican court records show.
Has law enforcement had any success?
In response to a September letter from several members of Congress who asked for more to be done to address weapons smuggling to Haiti, the U.S. Commerce Department, which regulates firearms exports, said in December that none of its 11 foreign-based export control officers were posted in the Caribbean because of a lack of funds.
Still, the agency said that during the Biden administration, nine Haiti-related investigations resulted in convictions.
More recently, other federal law enforcement agencies have pursued several Haiti weapons cases.
Last month, a 31-year-old police officer in St. Cloud, Fla., pleaded guilty to purchasing and reselling at least 58 firearms as part of a scheme that sent hundreds of weapons to the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Haiti.
In January, a 34-year-old undocumented migrant from Guatemala, Ricardo Sune-Girón, pleaded guilty to firearms trafficking in Tampa. According to a plea agreement, Mr. Sune-Girón recruited straw purchasers to illegally buy 900 firearms — including assault rifles — that he then transported from Florida to the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
A former security officer for Haiti’s chief of police was arrested in Florida in December after investigators linked him to nearly 90 firearms.
How is law enforcement tackling the problem?
Haiti has few resources like scanners and border guards to tackle the problem of smuggled firearms at its borders and ports, while experts say the United States has limited capability to search exported goods at domestic ports and typically performs only random cargo inspections.
Ships sailing to Haiti from the United States are often jammed with assorted cargo, from secondhand clothing to household appliances, bicycles and cars, making it easy to hide contraband.
In one case, disassembled guns discovered aboard a freighter on the Miami River bound for Haiti were hidden in shipments that included tennis rackets, fruit juice, rice and clothing.
“We show up unannounced,” said Anthony Hernandez, a Customs and Border Protection agent who testified at the federal trial in Miami in January of an accused smuggler. “We do our best to get to as much as we can.”
Haiti’s law enforcement authorities did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
What about the Dominican Republic?
In the Dominican Republic, the United States supports a special unit of 30 local Customs agents, with 20 others currently being vetted to work on U.S.-related cases.
The authorities have tightened controls, including adding eight new X-ray scanners at main ports, where all cargo destined for Haiti is examined, the Dominican foreign ministry said.
Dominican Customs officials track all suspicious shipments to catch and prosecute traffickers, a U.S. Embassy representative who was not authorized to speak publicly said, questioning whether the Dominican Republic was an important source of illegal guns to Haiti.
Dominican Customs authorities referred questions to prosecutors, who declined to comment.
So what can be done to stop it?
Critics say not enough is done to regulate the sale of weapons in the United States to straw buyers, an illegal practice in which people buy guns on behalf of another person, including traffickers. The practice is responsible for a large number of the arms that wind up used in crimes in Mexico and throughout Latin America.
Dealers often ignore easily detectable purchasing patterns by gun traffickers posing as legitimate customers and repeatedly buying multiple weapons, experts say.
“That’s where you can stop this,” Jonathan Lowy, founder of Global Action on Gun Violence, said. “It’s very difficult to stop once the guns are in the hands of the trafficker. They can be broken down and put in a crate of breakfast cereal or fruit juices.”
