Even before President Donald Trump told Haitians this week they will no longer be welcome in the United States, travel from the crisis-wracked Caribbean nation was already difficult. It’s been restricted by deadly gang violence, repeated airport shutdowns and years-long visa delays at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince.

Now, with the newly instated travel ban, Haitian families are facing prolonged separation and the country risks being further isolated, according to Haitians and heads of U.S.-based organizations who see the move as unfair and discriminatory — and likely to have devastating consequences.

“This is choking Haiti, choking Haitians,” said Clarel Cyriaque, a Miami immigration attorney and longtime Haitian rights advocate. “The impact on Haiti and Haitians is astronomical.”

Haiti is in the midst of a spiraling crisis marked by years-long political instability, escalating gang violence, economic collapse and deepening hunger. On Wednesday, Trump made it the only country in the hemisphere whose nationals are banned from entering the U.S. The list of 12 nations with full bans also includes seven African countries. Cuba and Venezuela were added to a list of seven nations with partial bans.

The measures are set to take effect on Monday and have left many Haitians confused. While the White House proclamation made clear that the issuance of all new non-immigrant visas for Haitians will be suspended, State Department and Homeland Security officials have refused to say whether those with current, valid B1/B2 tourist visas will be allowed entry.

If those with current visas are banned, it will mean that many children will be unable to see their parents. Because of the ongoing gang violence and kidnappings, many children emigrated to the U.S. with one parent, leaving the other behind. A former Haitian lawmaker who travels frequently to the U.S. to see his own children, and who is currently in Haiti, said countless families will be split.

“The biggest winner are the gangs, holding the country hostage and instilling terror, which has led the U.S. not to take action to help Haiti to eliminate the gangs but rather to consider all law-abiding Haitian citizens as gangsters and pariahs,” said the lawmaker, who asked not to be named because he fears the ire of U.S. authorities.

The ban stands to affect not just all aspects of Haitian life but also South Florida’s economy, which offers the only U.S. gateway into the country aboard a Haitian-owned airline. Sunrise Airways became the sole carrier into and out of Haiti after gangs opened fire on three U.S. commercial airlines flying over Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture International Airport in November, prompting an ongoing Federal Aviation Administration ban on U.S. airlines.

“Why are they doing this now?” said Nathan Letang, a Haitian businessman. “Why are they doing this to Haiti in 2015?”

Letang, attending a Boston Foundation Haiti Funders Conference in Boston this week, blasted the ban as an effort to “humiliate Haitians.... If they want to isolate Haiti, they should just say they want to isolate Haiti.”

The Caribbean nation is already isolated from the neighbor with which it shares the island of Hispaniola. Since April 2024, the Dominican Republic has had its airspace closed to Haiti, and since January has deported more than 139,000 Haitians back to their country.

Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated some of Haiti’s most powerful gangs as global and foreign terrorists, a label that was welcomed by some Haitians, though others now see as having devastating consequences after President Donald Trump's travel ban.

The ban, and the terrorist designation, are likely meant to deal with the problem of illegal arms trafficking to Haitian gangs, which have used South Florida ports to smuggle weapons to Haiti, said Kim Lamberty, executive director of the Washington-based Quixote Center, a nonprofit social justice organization that advocates on behalf of Haiti.

Administration officials, she said, are afraid of taking on the U.S. gun lobby to curtail the illegal arms and have instead turned to measures like the terrorist designation and the travel ban.

“This visa thing now punishes regular people,” Lamberty said, “because they (U.S. authorities) don’t think they can deal with the real issue because of the gun lobby.”

In justifying Haiti’s ban, Trump’s proclamation cites the Haitian government’s inability to provide the “information necessary to ensure its nationals do not undermine the national security of the United States.” The administration also cites high so-called overstays — over 31% for B1/B2 tourist visa holders, and 25% for individuals with student visas.

“Additionally, hundreds of thousands of illegal Haitian aliens flooded into the United States during the Biden Administration,” the proclamation said, in reference to the more than 200,000 Haitians who legally entered the U.S. under a humanitarian parole program that required them to have a financial sponsor in the U.S., undergo government background checks and buy airline tickets.

“This influx harms American communities by creating acute risks of increased overstay rates, establishment of criminal networks, and other national security threats,” the proclamation added.

The Congressional Black Caucus on Friday issued a statement blasting the travel ban, noting that the majority of the nations involved have predominantly Black and brown populations. In the case of Haiti, the CBC met with the country’s new ambassador to the U.S., Lionel Delatour.

“This proclamation has nothing to do with national security. Rather, it represents a continuation of the Trump administration’s long standing pattern of bigoted attacks against Black and brown nations,” Rep. Yvette Clarke, a New York Democrat, said. “His aim is to create fear, sow division, and demonize the vulnerable —many of whom are struggling to recover from catastrophic circumstances, seeking life-saving medical attention, or have waited decades to be reunited with family members.”

U.S.-based organizations that rely on visas to bring employees to the United States for training and conferences warn of the ripple effects and say the new policy is akin to keeping people “inside a burning house.”

“They’re actually blaming the people, as if they twisted the Biden administration’s arms to create these programs through a planned invasion, and now they must pay the consequences,” said Cyriaque.

The narrative being pushed by the Trump administration is that beneficiaries of the Biden-era humanitarian parole program known as CHNV, the initials of the four countries affected — Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela — have assaulted the immigration system.

Haitians haven’t had access to normal visa services at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince since before the COVID-19 pandemic, which created huge backlogs in the processing of applications. The gang violence that escalated after the July 2021 assassination of the president, Jovenel Moïse, only exacerbated the situation. The embassy’s next appointment to process requests for non-immigrant visas to the U.S. is in 2026.

In the meantime, the country has continued to plunge deeper into chaos. The main international airport in Port-au-Prince remains close to U.S. commercial traffic. Roads in and out of the capital, already in imminent danger of collapse, are controlled by armed groups, leaving those with means and connections to resort to helicopter flights to escape the violence out of the only airport connecting them to the outside world in Cap-Haïtien.

Longtime U.S. visa holder and Haitian development professional Ronel says this is what led him and his wife to leave the country under the humanitarian parole program in 2023, after spending a year in limbo unable to get his U.S. visa renewed.

“I was stuck,” he said. “There was no more hope.”

After arriving in the U.S., Ronel, who asked that his last name not be used to avoid being targeted by U.S. immigration authorities, applied for political asylum, citing threats against him as a youth organizer and international project coordinator in Haiti.

Despite his fear of persecution in Haiti, he’s says he’s now considering abandoning his asylum application.

“Even though I was actually persecuted in Haiti... the thing with asylum is you cannot travel, and I am a global traveler,” he said. “I am part of different networks in the world, volunteer networks; there are conferences happening everywhere in the world, and you’re stuck.”

He is also concerned about the Trump administration’s targeting of Haitians and other immigrants, especially the half-million in the Biden-era parole program who are now being targeted for deportation after the U.S. Supreme Court gave Trump the green light last week.

“I don’t want to stay in the U.S. with this situation. I don’t like living in distress,” said Ronel, 38. “That’s why we are really actively exploring the alternatives, before it’s too late.”

While he and his wife are exploring several countries to move to, there is one that is off the table: Haiti.

“I don’t want to be stuck in Haiti,” he said. “It’s hard for you to get out of the country and almost everywhere you go, requires you to transit through the United States.... This is very bad news for Haitian professionals who want to be connected with the world.”

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