Center for Public Integrity

U.S. spent $140 million on controversial post-quake food exports

Center for Public Integrity, GlobalPost/GroundTruth

Photo: Ben Depp.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — In the months following Haiti’s devastating January 2010 earthquake, the United States government spent $140 million on a food program that benefited U.S. farmers but has been blamed for hurting Haitian farmers.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) sent 90,000 metric tons American of crops to Haiti as part of the Food for Progress and its related Food for Peace programs run by USAID and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The programs send abundant American crops to nations in need of emergency relief. That amounted to almost three quarters of the U.S. government aid to Haiti after the earthquake, according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Haiti Justice Alliance, a Minnesota-based advocacy organization.

Read the full investigation as it appeared at the Center for Public Integrity.

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U.S. Deportees to Haiti, Jailed Without Cause, Face Severe Health Risks

California Watch, Center for Public Integrity, Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, Huffington Post, Miami Herald, The Nation & The Nation Institute Investigative Fund, Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The United States has deported more than 250 Haitians since January knowing that one in two will be jailed without charges in facilities so filthy they pose life-threatening health risks.

An investigation by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting found that the Obama administration has not followed its own policy of seeking alternatives to deportation when there are serious medical and humanitarian concerns.

Click HERE to read the full investigation at FCIR. Versions of this story were published by California Watch, the Center for Public Integrity, Huffington Post, Miami Herald, the Nation Institue Investigative Fund, and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, among other outlets.

Impact update: Days after my investigation revealed the Obama administration was illegally deporting immigrants to Haiti where they would be imprisoned under life-threatening conditions, the White House ordered a comprehensive review of 300,000 such deportation cases.

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