Haiti was in the throes of political chaos. Opponents of President Jovenel Moïse were marching through the streets of Port-au-Prince demanding his removal from office. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who had been railing against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro at a Coral Gables conference, was asked about the deepening crisis.

The United States, he said at the October 2019 event, had no role to play in the Haitian crisis, which was fueled by gasoline shortages and allegations of graft and mismanagement by Moïse.

“I can tell you that today, there’s a system of government in Haiti. Whether it functions well or not, it’s up to the people of Haiti to decide,” he said. “But we are not going to interfere on behalf or against any elected official.”

On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump nominated Rubio to be secretary of state — the United States’ top diplomat.

For Haitians, Rubio’s nomination is a mixed bag, given his past position that the U.S. should not be involved in the country’s messy instability, while also supporting some Haiti-focused legislation in Congress.

But his new role, some Haiti experts say, may leave him no choice but to get enmeshed in the chaotic politics of the volatile Caribbean nation.

“Haiti is just one of those places that you could try to ignore it for a period of time, but then you can’t,” said Thomas Shannon, a former under secretary of state who spent nearly 35 years in the U.S. foreign service. “There are many things to be worried about on Haiti. Chief among them, of course, is the well-being of the Haitian people.”

Rubio’s years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have given him a broad view of the world and the challenges that the United States faces. His years on the Western Hemisphere subcommittee also means that he knows the region well.

But he will be coming into the job at a time of increasing tensions in the region — and growing instability in Haiti: Five years after Rubio’s announced stance of non-interference in. the Caribbean country, Moïse is dead, assassinated in the middle of the night inside his bedroom. The capital is under siege by armed gangs that kidnap, rape and kill — and shoot at U.S. aircraft. Foreign cops have been sent by Kenya and other nations as part of a U.S.-backed — and financed — effort to combat the gangs.

“What we have building in a greater Caribbean, in Cuba, Haiti and in Venezuela, is a real cauldron of chaos and points of significant instability that unless they’re contained or addressed, could be very damaging,” Shannon said. “And Haiti, in many ways, is a real marker... because it’s so bad, and because our responsibility for it is so obvious, and and our unwillingness to accept that responsibility, is so egregious.”

Here are some of the key issues that Rubio and the incoming Trump administration will face in Haiti:

▪ Armed gangs: Already in control of more than 85% of Port-au-Prince and spreading to surrounding areas, the gangs have doubled down on the violence and become even more emboldened since the arrival of the multinational security support mission in June.

▪ The Multinational Security Support mission: The U.S.’s response to Haiti’s violence has been to help create a U.N. authorized multinational force, led by Kenya. But it remains in dire need of equipment and funding. Key Republican lawmakers have not been supportive of the mission and earlier this year blocked the State Department’s efforts to provide $100 million for the force. The incoming administration will need to decide what to do with the mission, which has been authorized until October of 2025, but could see its funding run out by February.

▪ Putting the U.N. in charge: The Biden administration wants to see the Kenya-led mission transformed into a formal U.N. peacekeeping operation, which would mean the world agency would take over all facets of the operation, including providing the troops and paying for the mission. But it is unclear if Russia and China, which hold veto power in the U.N. Security Council, will support the peacekeeping resolution the U.S has been drafting with Ecuador. If the Security Council fails to approve the resolution, the Trump administration will need to decide its next steps as the gang crisis grows more severe.

▪ Immigration: Haiti’s economy is on the brink of collapse, along with its healthcare system. The combination, and the increasing gang violence, could push more Haitians to take to the sea to reach the U.S., fueling an immigration crisis even as the Trump administration plans to strip Haitians of immigration benefits and put them on deportation flights.

▪ Elections: Haiti hasn’t had one since 2016. The Biden administration helped put in place a transitional government tasked with putting an elected president in office by Feb. 7, 2026. But Haiti’s political leaders this week expressed doubts about that timetable and the credibility of such a vote, citing the recent shakeup that led to the naming of a new prime minister this week and the ongoing investigation of three members of the ruling presidential council accused of bribery.

▪ Air travel.The country is currently under a Federal Aviation Administration ban preventing U.S. carriers from traveling in Haitian airspace for the next 30 days, after planes from three U.S. airlines were hit by gunfire. It is unclear if the ban, which has also forced a cancellation of the United Nations’ humanitarian flights in the country, will still be in place by the time Trump takes office on Jan. 20. But protecting U.S. carriers from the gang violence will remain a top concern.

“Haiti is such a mess of massive proportions — a mess made by both parties — that Rubio has been loathe to do more than the bare minimum,” said Fulton Armstrong, a Haiti expert and senior faculty fellow at the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University in Washington.

Fulton, who was chief of a CIA group on Haiti when President Bill Clinton helped restore Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power in 1994, said “when the gangs don’t shake things up,” Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council, which just booted the country’s second prime minister in eight months, and the country’s elite will, forcing the administration’s hand.

“As secretary of state, Rubio won’t be able to hide under the bed on the Haiti issue,” he said.

During his years in Congress, Rubio sponsored a number of bills supporting trade with the Caribbean nation and toughening Haiti-related reporting requirements from the State Department. This included a bipartisan bill requiring State to investigate and provide Congress with annual reports to identify the relationships between criminal gangs and political and economic elites in Haiti. He also supported the Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act, known as the HOPE-HELP Act, which gives preferential treatment to imports from Haiti to help the country’s struggling textile industry.

“I can’t talk about the whole of Haiti, but it was Sen. Rubio who introduced the Senate bill almost three years ago to get the HOPE-HELP renewed,” said Georges Sassine, the former president of Haiti’s Manufacturers’ Association. “I am very grateful.”

But critics say Rubio has avoided taking on the big issues in Haiti, steering clear of tackling problems that are politically challenging, and they complain it’s been difficult to get him to engage.

“Our history as a community with him is that it’s always been a challenge to reach his office and communicate with anyone who could give us a response or direct a response to anything,” said Gepsie Metellus, a Haitian-American South Florida activist. “So I’m really not expecting much.”

Metellus said she has been particularly disappointed with his lack of response to the ongoing political crisis — and his silence as the Haitian community sustained attacks during the presidential campaign, when Trump falsely claimed Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ pets.

“I was very disappointed that I didn’t hear anything from him, especially someone whose own personal history is so similar to the history of most Haitians in South Florida,” she said. “I had hoped for a comment from him, even to reiterate our humanity.”

As someone who grew up in Miami, home to one of the largest Haitian-American communities in the U.S., Rubio is more than familiar with its struggles. But that has not always translated into the kind of staunch support Haitians have received from other congressional lawmakers.

“I don’t know if I should put too much stake in hoping that as secretary of state he would even give us the time of day,” Metellus said. “This is someone who’s been very active on the political scene for a while now, as a state representative, a state senator, Florida senator. He has been around the challenges as well as the opportunities in this community. He’s seen progress. He’s seen accomplishments.”

Among Washington observers, there has always been debate about how high Haiti, less than 900 miles from Florida’s shores, will figure on any new administration’s agenda. It is the same with Trump, who went from promising to be Haitian-Americans’ “champion” during his 2016 presidential campaign to now vowing to begin deporting Haitians.

“Rubio in the State Department, along with others in the incoming Trump administration, will take an exceedingly hard line against Haitian migration to the United States as as a result of the disorder and violence,” said Cynthia Arnson a fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington. “That said, it’s unclear how Rubio will position the United States in an effort to help put Haiti back together again.”

Arnson, a Latin American expert who teaches at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, said there is a lot of unknowns about the new administration, even with Rubio’s past support for some U.S. assistance to Haiti.

“I think he’s been trying to some extent to thread a needle, recognizing that there are large communities of Haitians, legal immigrant Haitians in Florida and greater Miami area,” she said.

There is one piece of advice she would give the incoming administration, Arson said: “It’s not advisable for the U.S. to look the other way as a state collapses so close to U.S. borders and the borders of U.S. allies.”

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