House Foreign Affairs Chairman Brian Mast returned from a rare congressional visit to Port-au-Prince with firsthand accounts of gang atrocities, including the torture-killing of a civilian and the kidnapping of a 6-year-old American girl held for more than 46 days.
Mast, a Florida Republican who led a bipartisan delegation to both Venezuela and Haiti, the first congressional trip to either country in a decade, told Fox News Digital that parts of Haiti's capital resemble active combat zones. He compared conditions to Afghanistan and called Port-au-Prince "probably the poorest place I've ever been through in my life."
The trip placed Mast face-to-face with the consequences of years of political collapse in Haiti, where gangs have controlled large sections of Port-au-Prince since the assassination of the country's former president in July 2021. What he described, and what he said he watched on video, goes well beyond the sanitized language that typically filters back to Washington from foreign visits.
Mast recounted the story of a heavy-machinery operator who had been helping Haitian police clear gang-made blockades from city streets. Gangs in Port-au-Prince block roads with rubble, debris, and deep ditches to prevent police and military units from moving through their territory.
The operator paid for that work with his life. Mast said gangs kidnapped the man's family, then offered a trade: his family's freedom for himself. He turned himself over.
What followed was recorded on video and shown to the congressional delegation. Mast described it in explicit terms:
"They brutally killed him. I mean it's all on video. They cut off his ears, fed him his own ears... Then they hacked at him for probably at least five minutes with machetes. His limbs looked like a Christmas tree afterwards, with just bone and skin and other things coming off of him, until ultimately they killed him. That is who these gangs are."
Mast did not identify who recorded the video or how it reached the delegation. But his account makes clear the footage was detailed enough to leave no ambiguity about the nature of the killing, or the gangs responsible for it.
Beyond the machinery operator's killing, Mast disclosed that a 6-year-old American citizen had been kidnapped and held by a Haitian gang for at least 46 days. He said her release appeared to have been secured through a ransom exchange the day before he spoke publicly about the case.
Mast chose his words carefully when describing the child's condition but left little doubt about what he believed had happened to her:
"There was a 6-year-old American citizen girl. I don't want to say that she was raped, but there were health issues that led to believe that she was also raped, as a 6-year-old girl, by these gangs."
The State Department confirmed it was aware of reports of an American child kidnapped for ransom in Haiti. A spokesperson said the administration "has no higher priority than the safety and security of Americans" but declined to provide further details, citing respect for the family's privacy.
Mast described the girl's release as part of the broader effort to push back against gang control of the capital. "It appears as though we were able to get an exchange finally made yesterday," he said. "But again, it's just another example of who these gangs are and the forces that are being brought to bear, to bring them to heel."
Key questions remain unanswered. Neither the ransom amount nor the identity of whoever facilitated the exchange has been disclosed. Whether any U.S. government action contributed to the release, beyond awareness, is unclear from available statements.
Mast met with Haiti's prime minister at the presidential palace, a location he said would have been "a war zone" just a year earlier. He credited Haitian security forces and an international coalition, including a U.S. paramilitary group run by Erik Prince, with beginning to reclaim territory from the gangs.
"They have been actively working to take back land across the breadth of Port-au-Prince."
That progress, though, is relative. The gangs still block streets. They still kidnap civilians. They still torture and kill people who cooperate with authorities. The machinery operator's murder and the child's kidnapping happened during or just before the delegation's visit, not years ago.
Mast described the gang blockade tactics in detail: rubble piled in roads, debris scattered across intersections, and ditches dug deep enough to stop armored vehicles. "The gangs will essentially block the streets with rubble, with debris, they'll dig giant ditches in the road, and so these military and police units can't traverse," he said.
The congressman drew a direct line between the Temporary Protected Status program and the collapse of Haiti's ability to defend itself. TPS was first granted to Haitians after the devastating 2010 earthquake, roughly 16 years ago. Thousands of Haitians remain in the United States under the program, though the Trump administration has moved to end their protected status.
The Supreme Court recently cleared that termination, a decision that has drawn sharp criticism from Democrats and some Republicans alike. The ruling set the stage for ICE to begin large-scale enforcement operations as the expiration date approaches.
Mast argued that the TPS program drained Haiti of the very people it needed to fight the gangs. Able-bodied men who might have served in the police or military left the country instead. "All of these people took the chance to say 'Okay, I'm leaving,' and it left their forces that are supposed to protect the country essentially with no forces, which is one of the other parts of how the gangs came to be," he said.
His proposed solution was blunt: direct returning TPS recipients into Haiti's security forces, which he said are actively recruiting.
"One of the big things would be to take the able-bodied males and put them into the police and military, which are actively recruiting, which were so decimated by the TPS taking place in the first place."
That argument reframes the entire TPS debate. Critics of the termination have focused on the danger of sending people back to a country overrun by gangs. Mast is saying the country is overrun by gangs in part because those people left. Both claims can contain truth, but Mast's framing carries a logic that the opposition has largely failed to address: if TPS was always supposed to be temporary, 16 years without obtaining permanent residency is not a story of people who had no options. It is a story of a program that lost its original purpose.
DHS Secretary Mullin has made a similar point about the meaning of "temporary" in Temporary Protected Status, a word that, after more than a decade and a half, had effectively become permanent for many recipients.
Mast did not spare Haiti's own leadership from blame. He traced the gang crisis to its political origins, saying Haitian politicians created armed groups for their own benefit and then lost control of them.
"This started with political people starting gangs there for their own benefit. And most of the politicians there are beyond guilty of pillaging their own country instead of doing something good for their country. That's how Haiti is in the state that it's in."
That assessment, from a congressman who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee and who just walked through Port-au-Prince, is not an academic observation. It is a firsthand judgment from someone who saw the video of a man fed his own ears and learned about a 6-year-old American girl held hostage for weeks.
Mast is a decorated combat veteran who lost both legs as a bomb disposal expert under Joint Special Operations Command, earning the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and the Army Commendation Medal for Valor. When he compares parts of Port-au-Prince to Afghanistan, it is not rhetorical flourish. He has been to both.
The bipartisan delegation's visit also included a stop in Venezuela, though Mast provided no public details about that leg of the trip. The fact that Congress had not sent a delegation to either country in a decade speaks to how disconnected Washington's policy debates have been from conditions on the ground.
Meanwhile, some Democrats have accused the administration of betraying voters by ending TPS protections. That argument may play well in certain districts. It does not answer the question Mast is raising: what happens to Haiti when every able-bodied person who could fight the gangs is living in the United States on a "temporary" status that never ends?
Sixteen years of temporary protection did not stabilize Haiti. It helped empty the country of the people who might have. The gangs filled the vacuum, and a 6-year-old American girl paid part of the price.
