WASHINGTON, DC, United States (AFP) — Haiti’s new leader was in the United States on Saturday for a visit set to include meetings with international financial institutions as well as a White House official, his office and a National Security Council spokesperson said.

The trip by Prime Minister Garry Conille, heading the country’s transitional government, and other officials comes days after Kenyan police finally arrived in violence-ravaged Haiti, on a long-awaited mission to help stabilise the Caribbean nation, upended by powerful gangs.

Washington has promised generous funding for the UN-backed mission, but ruled out sending American troops. Conille will meet with Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer on Monday, a National Security Council spokesperson said.

Conille, along with his economic and foreign ministers as well as other officials, will also hold “important working meetings” with the heads of international financial institutions, according to his office.

They will also visit Haiti’s embassy in Washington and travel to New York, it said.

Haiti has long been rocked by gang violence, but conditions sharply worsened at the end of February when armed groups launched coordinated attacks in Port-au-Prince, saying they wanted to overthrow then-Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

Henry announced in early March that he would step down and hand over executive power to a transitional council, which named Conille as the country’s interim prime minister on May 29.

The violence in Port-au-Prince has affected food security and humanitarian aid access, with much of the city in the hands of gangs accused of abuses including murder, rape, looting and kidnappings.

The multinational Kenyan force, green lit last year by the UN Security Council, had been held up for months amid challenges to its deployment in Kenyan courts before the first police officers arrived last Tuesday.

The spike in gang violence has forced many people to flee the country and last Wednesday more than 100 Haitian migrants arrived by boat in the US state of Florida and surrendered to border authorities.

US Border Patrol said the boat made landfall around 4:00 am (2100 GMT) and the migrants were taken into custody.

“US Border Patrol agents with support from federal, state and local law enforcement partners responded to a migrant landing and encountered 118 Haitian migrants,” Samuel Briggs II, the acting chief patrol agent for US Border Patrol Miami Sector, said in a post on
X, formerly Twitter.

The migrants spent a week at sea until they arrived at Key West, part of the Florida Keys archipelago at the southern tip of the state, local authorities told The Miami Herald.

The US Coast Guard has repatriated 294 Haitians since October 2023, according to
The Washington Post.

In March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed an executive order increasing the deployments of police officers and National Guard soldiers in the Keys “in anticipation of a potential influx of illegal immigrants from Haiti”.

The Republican leader has made the fight against illegal immigration one of the hallmarks of his administration in recent years.