U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met on Tuesday with Haiti Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, who is on a weeklong visit to the United States seeking to shore up support for the volatile country.

State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said Rubio reaffirmed U.S. support for Haiti’s stability and security and welcomed “progress on the deployment” of a new anti-gang force supported by the U.S. and the United Nations.

“Secretary Rubio commended the prime minister’s leadership as security forces expand their presence and coordination,” Pigott said.

He added that Rubio also stressed the importance of improving security conditions to enable Haiti’s path to elections, while underscoring the administration’s support for a multiyear reauthorization of the congressional law known as HOPE/HELP, which has given Haiti’s factories duty-free access to the United States.

The benefit, which expired in October 2025, was ultimately renewed for only one year. Haiti’s garment sector says the program, which employs thousands of workers in Port-au-Prince and northern Haiti, has been a lifeline for the country.

The topics were a priority for Fils-Aimé, who recently survived a challenge to his authority with the support of Rubio after executive power was transferred to him and his cabinet from a nine-member transitional presidential council after a vexing, corruption-laden tenure.

As Fils-Aimé and Rubio met, heavy rain lashed metropolitan Port-au-Prince, where several streets were flooded, making traffic difficult and disrupting residents’ daily activities. Authorities, who recently confirmed the deaths of at least a dozen Haitians in the country’s northwest and the destruction of hundreds of home due to heavy rainfall, urged caution as water levels rose.

The rainstorm, however, is the least of Haiti’s worries as authorities continue to see several overlapping developments amid an ongoing rise in kidnappings and rapes and indiscriminate attacks against civilians, all carried out by armed gangs.

Since last week, residents in parts of Port-au-Prince have been trapped in gang crossfire after rival coalitions escalated their fight for territory. Armed groups Chen Mechan and Taliban have joined forces with the group 400 Mawozo in clashes with groups operating in Pierre 6 and Terre Noire, in an effort to expand their territorial control.

The violence has paralyzed traffic and commerce in the area, with major employers unable to operate. In a statement, Rhum Barbancourt, one of the country’s leading companies, said its sugarcane fields had been set ablaze.

On Monday, as gunfire broke out between armed groups near Toussaint Louverture International Airport, a stray bullet struck a glass door of an administrative building, leading domestic carrier Sunrise Airways to cancel flights for the day.

The same day, specialized units of the Haiti National Police said they had killed a dozen bandits in the southeastern town of Seguin outside of Marigot. Earlier this month, the area became a new battleground after the mayor reported that at least eight people had been killed and the local police station burned in a gang attack.

The widening reach of Haiti’s gang violence come as the Kenya-led multinational security support mission continues to draw down to make way for the U.S.-backed Gang Suppression Force. It also comes as the Trump administration prepares to argue next week before the U.S. Supreme Court that Haiti is safe enough for its nationals to return, and that the U.S. should be allowed to end deportation protections for about 350,000 Haitians.

Meanwhile, in a Miami federal courtroom, four South Florida men are on trial in connection with the July 7, 2021, assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, a brazen killing that created a power vacuum and plunged the already fragile country into its current gang-fueled chaos and deepening humanitarian crisis.

Ahead of his meeting with Rubio, Fils-Aimé met with the secretary general of the Organization of American States and visited the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. On Thursday, he is expected to address the United Nations Security Council, where diplomats will receive an update on the violence, discuss plans for long-delayed elections — last held in 2016 — and review progress on the deployment of the newly authorized gang-fighting force.

Haiti’s National Police said on Tuesday that a delegation from Bangladesh had arrived in the country. The South Asian country is among the nations fielding the military soldiers who will be making up the 5,500-member Gang Suppression Force. Days earlier the police high command had also welcomed a delegation with representatives from Chad, Sri Lanka and Mongolia.

The U.N. panel of experts tasked with investigating the crisis in order to bring sanctions and ensure adherence to a U.N. embargo, noted in its recently published mid-term report that while security operations disrupted several gangs and slowed their expansion in Port-au-Prince, “these gains remain fragile without a sustained security presence. Concerns persist about the risk of renewed gang violence, particularly as further deployment of the Gang Suppression Force is still awaited.”

Experts noted there were widespread human-rights violations across Haiti, particularly in Port-au-Prince and the Artibonite and Center regions, between October 2025 and February, the reporting period. This includes killings and sexual violence, with some victims raped by groups of 10 or more perpetrators.

“Gang leaders also continued to recruit children, who often have no alternative means of survival, using them in combat and to shield themselves from law enforcement operations. These operations, including the increased use of drone strikes, resulted in significant casualties, prompting concerns from human rights organizations about the use of lethal force in Haiti,” the report said.

The report also noted that armed gangs and others are actively seeking to acquire weapons and ammunition.

“Seizures at ports of exit in the United States of America and ports of entry during the reporting period indicate that the arms embargo continues to be violated,” the experts warned.

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