Erik Prince brings his mercenaries to Haiti. What could go wrong?

Prince's Trump era return

The brother of Betsy DeVos, who served as education secretary in Trump’s first term, Prince has long been a supporter of Republican politics. He donated $250,000 to Trump’s successful 2016 presidential run.

But, concerned that Prince’s controversial private security projects brought unwanted scrutiny to their work, DoD and CIA officials essentially barred him from contracts in 2020.

And yet, Prince has been active in the rightwing-national security periphery and has resurfaced in official circles in recent months, even participating in group chats with State Department and National Security Council senior officials. And he’s been eager to showcase his usefulness through a barrage of pitches to the Trump administration as well as other relevant players in its orbit.

In recent months he has floated a scheme to Trump in which private contractors would assist the administration in hitting its deportation targets. In April, Prince also pushed for a plan in which his contractors would be in charge of a prison partly owned by the U.S. in El Salvador.

Prince brokered a deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the same month, arranging to secure and tax the nation’s mineral wealth — just as the DRC and U.S. moved closer with their own minerals-for-security deal.

“Where was he during the (Democratic administration)? He was nowhere. He was hiding. So when Trump is in office, he comes out like a peacock and starts looking for contracts,” said Sean McFate, former contractor and author of “The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order.”

McFate pegged the Haiti deal as a case in which Prince was acting as “an opportunist aligned with Trump." Prince knows the Trump administration wants to stanch the flow of illegal migrants to the U.S. and to send back to Haiti those already here in the U.S. Right now, the security situation there makes it all the more complicated. While emphasizing much could go wrong, McFate said Prince’s initiative just might quell the country’s violence. “We’ll see,” he said.

“What's different this time…is that [Prince is] not really pitching contracts to Washington. He's pitching contracts in cooperation with what he thinks is Washington,” McFate posited. “He's finding clientele who are not Americans, but he's doing it with the blessing he thinks [he’ll get], or wants [from] Trump.”

Appearing to address Haiti’s gang-related woes, in other words, helps Prince align himself with Trump’s political goals.

Will Prince undermine Port-Au-Prince?

The Prince deal is occurring within the context of extensive ongoing American intervention in Haiti.

Currently the U.S.-backed, Kenyan-led multinational police force operating in Haiti to combat the armed groups is largely seen as a failure. Previously, a U.N. peacekeeping mission aimed at stabilizing Haiti from 2004 through 2017 was undermined by scandal, where U.N. officials were condemned for killing civilians during efforts aimed at armed groups, sexually assaulting Haitians, and introducing cholera to Haiti.

The cloud of American intervention dates back far more than a century, but more recently, the U.S. installed former interim Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry in 2021 following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. Henry himself resigned last year following pressure from the U.S., turning government affairs over to a foreign-backed transitional council — where council members had to endorse international intervention to improve Haiti’s security situation to join.

Before that, the U.S. was accused of ousting Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide after he proved obstructive to U.S. foreign policy goals, in 2004. (The U.S. denies this coup took place).

Now, experts fear a clumsy, profit-driven private mercenary touch could now push Haiti past the brink.

"Haiti's crisis was generated by the dismantling of democratic accountability structures, including the police, but also the courts, the legislature and elections. A sustainable solution to the crises requires rebuilding those structures,” Brian Concannon, founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, told RS.

“With a history of unaccountable, deadly violence and undermining governance and the rule of law in countries where they operate, Erik Prince's companies seem ill-fitted to building accountability structures,” Concannon added.

"Having mercenaries just go in and start executing people… is going to be just like the U.N. [intervention in the past]. It's going to continue to undermine the rule of law and the social fabric and lead to just more rebounds of more trampoline effects of increasing gang violence,” Concannon explained.

Practical factors regarding the deployment of foreign private mercenaries in Haiti are also at play. For example, the jurisdiction governing foreign mercenaries’ actions remains hazy, especially within the context of the weak Haitian government overseeing its deployment.

“It’s unclear to what extent, if any, the Haitian government is capable of delineating the legal structures that would be in accordance with whatever global arrangement…is appropriate for this,” said researcher David Isenberg, author of “Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq.” “It is just problematic [to suppose], in my viewpoint, that the Haitian government, whatever remains of it, is…even capable of setting that out.”

“Prince's professional fighters have never shown a great grasp of local social and cultural issues or discretion in using force,” Ambassador Daniel Foote, the U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti from July to September 2021, told RS. “If they wind up running autonomous operations in Haiti, there's a great chance we'll see similar bloodbaths from Prince's 'army.'”

The Haitian Embassy in D.C. did not respond to a request for comment. Rodenay Joseph, who owns a Florida-based security officer training company and was reportedly contacted by Prince about possibly collaborating on his Haiti deal, also did not respond to inquiries from RS.

But the New York Times reported Joseph’s discomfort about private American mercenaries working with the Haitian government without outside oversight. “We should be very worried, because if (were) from the U.S. government, at least he can have the semblance of having to answer to Congress,” he told the Times, calling Prince’s scheme “just another payday.”

“If it’s him, his contract, he doesn’t owe anybody an explanation.”