U.S. citizens flee Haiti for Miami

U.S. State Department spokesman Vedant Patel on Monday confirmed in a press conference that, on Sunday, the U.S. had facilitated the travel of more than 30 Americans to Miami International Airport. He indicated that the State Department had pulled together the plan to evacuate the Americans during the previous two days. The U.S. Embassy in Haiti on Saturday said it had arranged for a charter flight for U.S. citizens to escape Haiti. It said the flight would take off from an airport in Cap-Haïtien since the airport in Port-au-Prince remained closed.

Will the U.S. keep flying out Americans? Patel did not confirm whether the United States would transport American citizens out of the country again. He said it was “a fluid and quickly evolving situation” in Haiti. Patel confirmed that nearly 1,000 people in Haiti had reached out to the U.S. Embassy about fleeing the country.

Dig deeper: Read my report in The Sift about how the U.S. Embassy in Haiti had deployed more Marines to its embassy.