FBI Director Kash Patel
©️AFP
Washington, September 17, 2025.- Haiti became a strategic crossing point for cocaine trafficking from Venezuela, alerted FBI director Kash Patel, in front of the US Senate. Presumed complicit local gangs, multiple transit routes, record seizures and fragility of the Haitian state reinforce this reality, while Washington promises to track drug traffickers.
FBI director Kash Patel called the alarm: Haiti is now playing a central role in transporting Venezuelan cocaine to the United States. Speaking before the Senate, he denounced the alleged complicity of Haitian criminal organizations, stressing the country's vulnerability to transnational networks.
This alert comes two months after the spectacular seizure carried out on 13 July 2025 by the National Police of Haiti (PNH). The authorities had intercepted a boat carrying 1045 kilos of cocaine off Turtle Island. A brutal reminder that, for decades, Haiti has been serving as a transit corridor for Mexican, Venezuelan and Colombian cartels.
UN experts had already documented the close links between drug cartels and Haitian gangs, including the Viv Ansanm coalition, declared a terrorist organization by the US State Department in May 2025. For the FBI, this hybrid crime, combining drug trafficking and armed violence, fuels national instability.
Recent seizures confirm the existence of multiple drug routes. Between 2022 and 2023, cargoes were intercepted both in the North (Cap-Haitien, Port-de-Paix, Artibonite), the Centre (Hinche, Mirebalais) and the West (Plaisance, Bon-Repos). But it is especially the South of Haiti in particular: Les Cayes, Île-à-Vache, Baie des Flamands and Plaisance-du-Sud, which remains the main gateway to drugs, with Jamaican marijuana and South American cocaine.
Without confirming the legality of recent US military strikes on suspicious ships, Kash Patel assured that all drug traffickers will be tracked. A statement that reflects Washington's will to stem the phenomenon, while widespread insecurity in Haiti facilitates the consolidation of these illegal roads.
W.A.
