Stop Illegal Weapons Trafficking to Haiti

Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns and 95 organizations sent the following letter to the leaders of the Department of State and Department of Homeland Security asking for immediate action to stop the flow of illegal weapons from the United States to Haiti.

August 26, 2025

We, the undersigned 96 organizations, are writing to express our support for the August 1, 2025, Congressional letter led by Representative Cherfilus-McCormick and Ranking Member Meeks and signed by 32 Members of Congress addressing the urgent issue of illegal arms trafficking to Haiti.

We call on you to take immediate action to stop the trafficking of guns to Haiti. The United States must do everything in its power to prevent Haiti, a mere 90-minute flight from Miami, from becoming a fully-fledged failed state run by criminal gangs, and an intermediary for drug and weapons smuggling in the hemisphere. Criminal gangs now control over 90% of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, as well as other large swaths of territory, terrorizing civilians with kidnappings, sexual violence, and indiscriminate killings. Gang sieges and arson attacks have internally displaced 1.3 million people, half of them children.

We urge you to take the following steps to safeguard U.S. national security, protect innocent Haitian civilians, and address the underlying causes of Haiti’s instability and migration by disrupting the flow of illicit firearms and ammunition from the United States to Haiti:

• Increase U.S. Customs and Border Protection resources dedicated to screening the contents of ships exiting via the Miami River, a primary starting point for firearm shipments to Haiti.
• Work with the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to implement a strategy to increase the number of illicit firearms recovered in Haiti that are submitted for tracing, similar to the work done recovering crime guns in Mexico.
• Take steps to require identity verification for all individuals sending packages to Haiti with a declared value under $2,500, in order to close a key loophole exploited to ship firearms and ammunition.
• Initiate an interagency strategy, together with the Commerce Department, Department of Defense, and Department of Justice, to increase resources to stop the illegal flow of arms from the United States to the Caribbean. This strategy should include collecting and reporting to Congress and to the public data about arms export trends, arms trafficking trends, efforts to disrupt illegal firearm exports, and data on prosecutions of illicit arms trafficking to the Caribbean.
• Work closely with authorities in the Dominican Republic to stop arms trafficking through its territory to Haiti.
• Work with the U.S. Congress to pass the bipartisan Haiti Criminal Collusion Transparency Act to hold accountable Haitian actors connected to weapons trafficking.

Gang violence in Haiti is fueled by American-made weapons. Although more is needed from the international community and from Haitian leadership to solve the country’s security crisis, getting arms and ammunition out of the hands of criminal gangs is the most constructive and efficient initial step the United States can take to bring security to Haiti, and to improve U.S. security as a result.

See the PDF for the list of signatories