Mercenary group helping quell Haiti gangs, Erik Prince says

Prince, a Hillsdale College graduate and the founder of mercenary security business Vectus Global, said Tuesday that some of his employees were successfully fighting gangs in Haiti. They were supporting a task force of Haitian national police, he said. The former U.S. Navy SEAL shared a video clip from CNN depicting a gang leader asking Prince’s mercenaries to cease operations. In addition to boots-on-the-ground support, Prince’s Vectus Air Defense Systems is known to carry out drone strikes.

Haiti has been mostly controlled by gangs since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. The police task force and its partners, including Prince’s group, have focused on fighting gangs in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Violence has continued across the country—for instance, a farming community’s church was burned in August, and dozens were reported dead. A United Nations-backed, multinational gang suppression force has deployed to Haiti and reported some success. But after months of operations, the UN said Sept. 29 that the force hadn’t yet reached its target size of 5,500 troops.

Prince said he recently saw evidence of better security conditions on a trip to Port-au-Prince. Combined security forces halted gangs’ advance in the capital and made progress in pushing them back, he added. Some markets reopened, children were once again walking to school in uniform, and police were patrolling the streets, he claimed.

However, the latest UN report on violence in Haiti noted that security forces sometimes killed bystanders while targeting gangs, especially during operations using explosive drones. At least 95 people not associated with gangs were killed from April to June, and the drones killed or hurt six children, according to the UN report. The report also said that while security forces curbed gang activity in some areas of the capital, violence worsened in other neighborhoods as rival gangs clashed.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read a feature profile of Erik Prince and his evangelical Christian roots in the Midwest.