National

Continued turmoil in Haiti is causing a growing number of Haitians to try to make it to American shores — and some advocates say the Biden administration isn't supporting this community in its time of crisis.

The big picture: Haitian-American activists in South Florida told Axios Today they feel like President Biden has gone back on campaign promises he made to the community to stand up for them.

“He has definitely failed us,” said Tessa Petit, co-executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition. “Joe Biden came to Little Haiti and said, “We will protect you.’ We’ve never seen this before. Literally, it feels like an attack towards Hatitians.” 

Driving the news: Although most Haitian migrants come into the U.S. through the Southern border, a growing number are attempting the dangerous trip by sea.

In the last three months, three large boats with Haitian migrants have landed in Key Largo, Fla. It’s the first time in over two years that boats have evaded the U.S. Coast Guard. The most recent, a 60-foot vessel crammed with 176 people, no lifesaving equipment and no navigational lights, landed on Jan. 9.

By the numbers: The U.S. Coast Guard says it intercepted 1,527 Haitian migrants off the Florida Keys in 2021, up from 418 in 2020 and 932 in 2019.

The Coast Guard says it has intercepted 557 Haitian migrants since Oct. 1, when the current fiscal year began. In that same time period, 9,007 Haitian migrants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Customs and Border Protection.

After thousands of migrants crossed into Del Río, Texas in September, Democratic senators, immigration advocates and lawyers have urged the Biden administration to stop the deportations of Haitian migrants, who face political instability and violence in their home country. 

Migrants crossing by land were often expelled under Title 42, the Trump-era pandemic provision that allows for migrants to be automatically deported without any hearings.

A spokesperson with the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that the Biden administration has not applied Title 42 to migrants arriving in Florida by sea.

What they're saying: For immigration attorney Friendly Julien, this is bigger than President Biden: “We have lost our illusion when it comes to not only the Biden Administration, but the Democrats in general.”

The other side: An administration official said the federal government has taken a number of steps to aid Haitian migrants in the U.S.

The Biden administration extended Temporary Protected Status to Haitians who were already in the United States before July 29, 2021, because of the current turmoil in Haiti. 

But that doesn’t apply to any new migrants, and the government's policy is to expel anyone who enters into the U.S. "irregularly," regardless of their country of origin.

Between the lines: While so much recent attention has been paid to the U.S.-Mexico border, South Florida has also been its own border town for decades, Juan Carlos Gomez, the Director of Florida International University’s Immigration Rights Clinic, told Axios. 

"South Florida is a key example of the disjunction of why there isn’t effective immigration reform,” Gomez said.

Advocates say Biden has let Haitian migrants down

More migrants are attempting the dangerous voyage by sea.

Photo illustration collage of Biden looking downcast next to Haitian migrants.  

Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Photos: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Christian Torres/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Haiti

Politics & Policy

South Florida Republicans in this year’s midterm elections are trying to capitalize on turnout success among Latinos in 2020 while Democrats vie for voters, too.

Driving the news: The Republican National Committee opened a Hispanic community center for cultural and campaign events in Doral, just two miles from former President Trump’s golf course, and in a city with a heavy Venezuelan population.

By the numbers: About 54% of Miami-Dade Latinos voted for Trump in 2020. Biden still won the county, but those votes helped trim his lead margin, and handed Trump a Florida victory.

The other side: The Democratic National Committee says it is starting its midterm efforts nationwide earlier, too.

The DNC announced a $20 million investment to get going early, Lucas Acosta, coalitions director and senior spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, told Axios.

In South Florida that will include combating the kinds of successful misinformation campaigns that were a big part of GOP success in 2020, Acosta says.

Be smart: South Florida’s Cuban-Americans tends to lean Republican, but veteran pollsters and demographers will all tell you that Miami-Dade County’s Latino population doesn’t track with the rest of the Latino population across the country.

The bottom line: With 30 federal seats at stake, Florida will stay a central piece of the political strategy in 2022.

Republicans and Democrats go all in for Florida Latinos

With 30 federal seats at stake, Florida will stay a central piece of the political strategy this year.

Illustration of an elephant trunk holding a megaphone.  

2022 elections

Latin America and Latinos

South Florida Republicans in this year’s midterm elections are trying to capitalize on turnout success among Latinos in 2020 while Democrats vie for voters, too.Driving the news: The Republican National Committee opened a Hispanic community center for cultural and campaign events in Doral, just two miles from former President Trump’s golf course, and in a city with a heavy Venezuelan population.

Houses of worship — across a variety of faiths, including Jewish synagogues to Buddhist temples, Muslim mosques and Catholic churches — are experiencing high amounts of vandalism, arson and other property damage.

The big picture: 2021 is on track to exceed last year's spike in hate crimes in the U.S., many of them linked to religious bigotry. The number of hate crimes reported in FY 2020 was the highest since 2001, when a wave of Islamophobia followed the 9/11 attacks, according to updated FBI data released yesterday.

By the numbers: The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said last week that it has now recorded 100 acts of hate against Catholic sites in the U.S. since May of 2020. 

Earlier this summer, Canada saw more than a dozen arson attacks on churches, following the discovery of mass graves near Catholic-run residential schools that had housed indigenous children.

Politics and news events across the world are driving hate incidents.

New York City experienced almost as many antisemitic hate crimes during a three-week period in May than in the whole first quarter of the year, said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino. 

That spike in violence coincided with heightened tensions between Israel and Palestine. 

Earlier, historically African American churches experienced property damage in retaliation for Black Lives Matter protests, and a Buddhist temple in Los Angeles was set on fire as a result of anti-Asian hate.

It's not just property damage: Wednesday marks the third anniversary of one of Pennsylvania's worst mass shootings, in which a white supremacist terrorist killed 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. 

A mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, in 2012 killed six people and injured four more. 

The Sikh Coalition subsequently created a safety toolkit to help houses of worship and local communities take advantage of help from local law enforcement.

“We’ve helped over 80 gurdwaras get a better sense of security,” said Sim J. Singh Attariwala, the senior policy and advocacy manager at The Sikh Coalition. 

What's next: Attariwala said the anti-Asian hate crimes law that President Biden signed earlier this year is a start — but that the coalition wants “local and state and federal officials to use their convening power to organize community forums and create task forces that prevent hate violence.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland said Monday at a Civil Rights Division’s virtual conference that the Justice Department has charged more than 17 people with federal hate crimes and has secured several convictions or guilty pleas.

He said DOJ's Civil Rights Division is also expediting its review of federal hate crimes.

The bottom line: “The communal institutions which hold us together traditionally — academia, arms of government, the media, the medical establishment, and now religious institutions — are held in low esteem relative to decades prior," Levin said.

"So when there are disputes or questions about authority, and particularly when you have these new conspiracy theories that come up like QAnon, there's always a place for someone of faith to be scapegoated. We're extremely concerned.” 

Go deeper: 🎧 Listen to an interview with Brian Levin on "Axios Today."

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to show that Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke at a Civil Rights Division’s virtual conference, not during congressional testimony.

Attacks rise on houses of worship

Reported hate crimes in the U.S. have jumped in recent years and some of those attacks are linked to religious bigotry.

Woven Stars of David along the fence at the Tree of Life Synagogue on the 1st Anniversary on October 27, 2019 in Pittsburgh, Penn.

Woven Stars of David hang along the fence at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on the 1st anniversary of a mass shooting at the synagogue. Photo: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

Hate crimes

Woven Stars of David hang along the fence at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on the 1st anniversary of a mass shooting at the synagogue.

Houses of worship — across a variety of faiths, including Jewish synagogues to Buddhist temples, Muslim mosques and Catholic churches — are experiencing high amounts of vandalism, arson and other property damage.The big picture: 2021 is on track to exceed last year&#x27;s spike in hate crimes in the U.S., many of them linked to religious bigotry. The number of hate crimes reported in FY 2020 was the highest since 2001, when a wave of Islamophobia followed the 9/11 attacks, according to updated <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="FBI data" data-vars-click-url="https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-updated-2020-hate-crime-statistics?ftag=YHF4eb9d17" data-vars-content-id="27580b09-006b-462b-b2cc-28b7b969f5b5" data-vars-headline="Attacks rise on houses of worship" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-updated-2020-hate-crime-statistics?ftag=YHF4eb9d17" target="_blank">FBI data</a> released yesterday.

Axios Closer

The pace of the economic recovery hinges in part on workers returning to jobs that involve dealing with an unpredictable public. But many of those workers say increasingly combative customers — angry about everything from long wait times to mask mandates — have prompted them to quit.

The big picture: Aggressive and violent clashes between customers and service workers over COVID safety protocols over the past nearly two years have led to prison sentences, fines and deaths.

Many workers say they're simply not willing to put up with the abuse any longer — and their employers are often taking their side, even in industries that have long deferred to their customers.

Businesses have shut down in support of their employees. Some industries have provided self-defense classes and banded together on public awareness campaigns.

Driving the news: Workers in restaurants, bars, hotels (6.8%) and retail (4.7%) businesses quit at a higher rate in August than the record national rate (2.9%), new data from the Labor Department on Tuesday showed.

The number of retail workers is still 202,000 short of February 2020 levels, September employment numbers show. 

Restaurants and bars are still about 1 million jobs short of pre-pandemic levels, with more than two-thirds of restaurant workers saying customer behavior is a factor in the industry's labor shortage. 

Because consumers were so used to a “frictionless economy" before the pandemic, there was no tolerance for a slowdown in services as businesses opened back up, says Melissa Swift, U.S. Transformation Leader at Mercer, a consulting firm.  

“Technology has insulated the upper classes from the physical labor that enables their lifestyle," she said.

What they’re saying: "I was extremely lucky to work in a place where the employer treated the employees well and everyone made excellent money. ... [Customers] did make me quit," former bartender who goes by Ash in West Virginia, tells Axios Today. 

“What really hurts is that the same people whining about people on unemployment were the same people who would come in and treat the people actually working like [crap],” she continued, saying that she also moved to Michigan.

“[As] an essential business — [we] continued to work tirelessly through the entire pandemic … All we ask for in return is empathy, courtesy and understanding,” says Casey Carville, who runs a group of nonprofit veterinary clinics in Texas.

Between the lines: This trend of increasingly unpleasant, sometimes violent customers is changing the balance of power within the industry.

“We’ve unnaturally privileged the consumer over the employee for a while now,” Swift said. “We’re seeing a shift away from customer obsession to a more balanced view of the world.” 

"Organizations have been forced to confront the fact that unhappy employees cannot provide the customer experience they’re targeting," she added.

What to watch: If consumer behavior doesn’t improve, more workers may leave, putting the workers who stay at more risk of abuse and placing even greater challenges on businesses to operate.

Workers' fears would likely abate if more Americans get vaccinated and the risk of getting infected on the job declines. That would also allow businesses and local governments to ease up on mask mandates that workers are often tasked with enforcing.

The bottom line:  The customer is no longer always right.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the latest quit rates that were released after the story was published. 

Unruly customers threaten economic recovery

If consumer behavior doesn’t improve, more workers may leave, placing even greater challenges on businesses to operate.

Illustration of a service bell with an angry emoji on the bell

Coronavirus

Axios Pro: Deals

Jobs

The pace of the economic recovery hinges in part on workers returning to jobs that involve dealing with an unpredictable public. But many of those workers say increasingly combative customers — angry about everything from long wait times to mask mandates — have prompted them to quit.The big picture: Aggressive and violent clashes between customers and service workers over COVID safety protocols over the past nearly two years have led to <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="prison sentences" data-vars-click-url="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/us/iowa-mask-fight-shane-michael.html?action=click&amp;module=RelatedLinks&amp;pgtype=Article" data-vars-content-id="515777d8-8550-4cee-9193-c55eda96d2f1" data-vars-headline="Unruly customers threaten economic recovery" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/us/iowa-mask-fight-shane-michael.html?action=click&amp;module=RelatedLinks&amp;pgtype=Article" target="_blank">prison sentences</a>, <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="fines" data-vars-click-url="https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-fines-against-unruly-passengers-reach-1m" data-vars-content-id="515777d8-8550-4cee-9193-c55eda96d2f1" data-vars-headline="Unruly customers threaten economic recovery" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-fines-against-unruly-passengers-reach-1m" target="_blank">fines</a> and <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="deaths" data-vars-click-url="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/us/georgia-shooting-grocery-store-mask.html" data-vars-content-id="515777d8-8550-4cee-9193-c55eda96d2f1" data-vars-headline="Unruly customers threaten economic recovery" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/us/georgia-shooting-grocery-store-mask.html" target="_blank">deaths</a>.

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

The grassroots efforts across Europe to help and house Ukrainians arriving in unfamiliar countries have helped thousands find refuge, but could also be a human trafficker's “dream," refugee advocates are warning.

The big picture: Almost 3 million people — mostly women and children — have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, according to the U.N. refugee agency. The vast majority have sought refuge in Poland, which has taken in more than 1.7 million refugees in the last 19 days.

On the ground: Daphne Panayotatos of Refugees International visited several border crossings into Poland last week, where hundreds of traumatized Ukrainians were greeted with free SIM cards, blankets, meals, and offers of rides. Hopefully, most people are well-intentioned, she told Axios, but added:

“Someone’s holding a cardboard sign that says ‘I can take three people to Berlin’ and who knows? It’s really creating a huge risk and without proper structures in place to register people, we could see some really negative consequences of this.”

World Vision Romania's Andreea Bujor notes that Romania, where over 400,000 Ukrainians have arrived, was already known as a hub of human trafficking. The priority when the war began was to provide emergency aid as quickly as possible, but now "we have to think about these things, too," Bujor says.

Driving the news: Yesterday, the City of Berlin began warning Ukrainian refugees arriving by train to be careful of offers of money or accommodation, over concern they could be trafficked or forced into prostitution.

Germany’s interior ministry says more than 300,000 private homes have been offered as shelter for refugees. But the German government is now asking people to register their homes with the government, rather than approaching people individually. 

Polish authorities on Thursday detained a 49-year-old man for allegedly raping a 19-year-old Ukrainian woman.

Aid groups are particularly concerned about the risks for children who were unaccompanied or separated from families, a danger highlighted by UNICEF and UNHCR last week.

An estimated 100,000 children live in orphanages and institutions in Ukraine, according to a Monday release by Save the Children.

"These children are some of the most vulnerable in Ukraine and face a heightened risk of trafficking, abuse, and other forms of exploitation," Save the Children’s Eastern Europe director Irina Saghoyan said in a statement.

What to watch: A coordinated, regional response is key, Panayotatos said, because if one neighboring country has weaker controls traffickers will simply go there.

Zoom out: A 2020 report from the European Commission said its “conservative estimate” is that human traffickers made 29.4 billion euros annually.

Listen to the full conversation with Daphne Panayotatos on Axios Today

Refugee groups warn of trafficking risk for fleeing Ukrainians

There's not a clear tracking system for who is going where.

Refugees rest at a train station in Berlin. Photo: Michael Hanschke/picture alliance via Getty

Ukraine

The grassroots efforts across Europe to help and house Ukrainians arriving in unfamiliar countries have helped thousands find refuge, but could also be a human trafficker&#x27;s “dream,&quot; refugee advocates are warning.The big picture: Almost 3 million people — mostly women and children — have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="according to the U.N. refugee agency" data-vars-click-url="https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine" data-vars-content-id="d4827a30-48e6-443c-abe7-59553b0b26cd" data-vars-headline="Refugee groups warn of trafficking risk for fleeing Ukrainians" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine" target="_blank">according to the U.N. refugee agency</a>. The vast majority have sought refuge in Poland, which has taken in more than 1.7 million refugees in the last 19 days.

China is becoming the most formidable rival America has faced, and the risk of confrontation with Russia, North Korea or Iran still looms. Authoritarians are rising, the chaotic Afghanistan exit revealed the limits of U.S. power, and the pandemic, climate change and other critical challenges continue to pose grave threats.

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Stories

Refugee groups warn of trafficking risk for fleeing Ukrainians

Republicans and Democrats go all in for Florida Latinos

Advocates say Biden has let Haitian migrants down

Attacks rise on houses of worship

Unruly customers threaten economic recovery