By NAN Contributor
News Americas, MIAMI, FL, Tues. Sept. 20, 2016: A group calling itself ‘Haitians For Trump’ on Facebook are surprising other immigrant and minority groups by actually drumming up support for controversial Republican Presidential contender Donald J. Trump, whose campaign has been marked by anti-immigrant rhetoric and a draconian immigration policy.
The group says it is a “movement of Haitian-American citizens who are committed to electing Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States.” They were among a few dozen Haitian-Americans who met with Trump on Friday, September 16, 2016 at the Little Haiti Cultural Center in Miami, Florida.
“We believe that Donald J. Trump has the knowledge, experience and the commitment to make America Great Again which will in turn trickle down to making the entire Western Hemisphere “Great,” the group says on its Facebook page while urging others to: “Join the movement – Mache ak Donald Trump.”
Most are angry with the Clintons and the way they have acted towards Haiti. The former President of the National Assembly, former Senator Bernard Sansaricq, told Trump Friday that the Bill Clinton administration, in 1994, tried to bribe him for support for the U.S. invasion of Haiti.
Leonce Thelusma, a former Haitian finance minister and a registered Republican, said Hillary Clinton has little to show for her and her husband’s involvement in Haiti, where most recently Bill Clinton served as U.N. special envoy and czar of the recovery effort after the quake.
“No Haitian has benefited from that,” he told the Miami Herald. “It’s unfortunate that we don’t have any institutions in Haiti that can call him and demand that he gives an account of the [earthquake] money.”
Another community leader told Trump: “The Clintons’ have been running Haiti for 25 years… and they say Haiti, with Martelly, is open for business. They opened up Haiti for monkey business. Drug business, money laundering business.”
Monique DieuJuste, 41, a Lauderhill residents who works as a registered respiratory therapist, was also among those at the event. She told the Miami Herald that she plans to vote for Trump because the “Clintons haven’t done anything for us.”
While some expressed concern over Trump’s anti-immigrant stance, some say he won them over with his support for possibly sending a Haitian-American as ambassador to Haiti should he be elected.
Haitian doctors, lawyers and former Haiti government ministers attended the event with Trump which was organized by Ringo Cayard, a Haitian community activist who said it’s time for the Haitian-American vote to stop being taken for granted.
Trump for his part told the small Haitian gathering in Little Haiti, Miami that telling them that they share “a lot of common values” and the country deserved better than Democratic rival Hillary Clinton champion because she failed Haiti when it needed help the most.
“Clinton was responsible for doing things a lot of the Haitian people are not happy with,” Trump said from prepared remarks, referring to the aftermath of Haiti’s devastating Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake. “Taxpayer dollars intended for Haiti and the earthquake victims went to a lot of the Clinton cronies.”
