“I don’t have anywhere to go. I don’t have anywhere to go.”

Rose Marie Michel paced frantically in the middle of a once-bustling street in Port-au-Prince’s Delmas 30 neighborhood, overcome with disbelief as she tried to grasp the scale of devastation.

In just a few short months, under the occupation of Haiti’s ruthless gangs, her entire community had been reduced to rubble.

“My house was there at the top. I used to live there,” said Michel, 73, pointing to the flattened remnants of the four-room, concrete home where she once eked out a living. “There is nothing.”

Schools, churches, small shops that survived the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed over 300,000 are now a pile of rubble, part of the apocalyptic landscape left behind by the retreating forces that control almost all of Haiti’s capital.

On Aug. 27, Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, a former police officer who is now the face of Haiti’s most powerful gang coalition, Viv Ansanm, announced that his armed men would withdraw from Delmas 30, Solino, Christ Roi and Nazon “so that everyone in these areas can return to their home.” Since then, Haitians have been embarking on a painful pilgrimage across this ravaged capital to return to neighborhoods marked by torched vehicles, hollowed-out buildings and vandalized homes.

The target of repeated attacks that began escalating in November, Delmas 30 came under full gang control in February when Viv Ansanm members stormed the neighborhood, killing residents and setting homes ablaze.

Michel, who has lived in the central Port-au-Prince community since 1974, was driven out along with hundreds of her neighbors with little more than the clothes on their backs. She returned to see if she and her six children, who lived nearby, still had homes to return to.

They did not.

“All have been burned down. We don’t have anything,” she cried in anguish, her outstretched arms flailing in the stifling heat. “There is no life left for me. I am stuck.”

‘I am desperate to return’

Haiti’s police have warned people not to go back to to neighborhoods still controlled by the very gangs that forced them to flee. Their warning comes as Haitians in Port-au-Prince weigh returning — and as the Trump administration, claiming conditions have improved in Haiti, prepares to send more than a half million Haitians back in February with the pending end of Temporary Protected Status.

In the meantime, their families, friends and former neighbors find themselves facing an impossible choice in a series of no good options: stay in soiled, decrepit camps or live under the ruthless terror of armed gangs who kill, kidnap, extort and rape.

Some have chosen to return, a reflection of their lack of options amid the power struggle between Viv Ansanm and Haiti’s beleaguered transitional government.

“I want to return, and I am desperate to return,” said a longtime Delmas 30 resident who gave a reporter only his first name, Sergio. “But where am I going to sleep? There, at the gate? Under the sun? In the open air?”

The wrought-iron bars that once protected his windows, the zinc sheeting that provided shelter from the elements and even the concrete walls — all gone.

“They took everything that was inside,” he said of his now-gutted home. “After that, they set it on fire.”

Even to people who have endured terrible trauma, the devastation has been unimaginable.

When the earth shook on Jan. 12, 2010, creating billions of dollars in infrastructure damage, “nothing happened to my house,” Sergio recalled. But here, in the man-made disaster wrought by Viv Ansanm’s members, nothing was spared; only the gutted husks of banks, churches and schools remain. Like his home, they are now hollowed out reminders, and far worse than the quake.

The father of three wondered whether he can reclaim his life. He spoke of the indignity of being forced to live with others. There was sadness in his voice, and anger, especially when he thought of Haiti’s transitional leadership. Nineteen months after Viv Ansanm coalesced in a bid to take down the government, they still hold a yoke around the population’s necks.

“I rather take my tarp and come set up at my own home. The president of the country told everyone to return home,” he said.

The president? Who are you referring to?

“Jimmy Chérizier,” Sergio said. “He’s the president. He’s the one that when he speaks, that’s it. No discussion.”

“The guys called for peace. They asked for everyone to return to their homes because they see that all these presidents that we have are nothing but bluffers,” Sergio said about the nine-member beleaguered Transitional Presidential Council. “They’ve only been interested in getting richer.”

Human shied or extortion racket?

Some here see Chérizier’s offering as part of a Machiavellian plot to use the returnees as human shields.

He is a wanted man: U.S. authorities recently placed a $5 million bounty on his head after a federal grand jury indicted him on conspiracy charges. A task force run out of the prime minister’s office is also preparing alongside the Haiti National Police to escalate drone strikes against him and other gang leaders.

“These guys feel that they could soon have issues. They want to use us as cover,” says Paul Liry, another resident of the area. “They need to understand that what’s taking place here isn’t good for anyone because in Haiti, we don’t have any money, we are not working, we have no means.”

There could be other ulterior motives. The current transitional government is supposed to be working toward the country’s first general elections since 2016. While few believe presidential polls are possible today, the return of residents is a potential gateway to controlling a large group of voters. A return of commercial activity would also potentially build the gangs’ coffers by allowing them to extort protection money and profits from businesses and entrepreneurs.

Chérizier, 48, who’s been actively meeting with former rivals, may be trying to duplicate the conditions in Carrefour, a sprawling suburb south of the capital where gangs now settle disputes, enact rules and profit from residents’ commercial activities.

In a statement on X, the local police union dismissed Chérizier’s call as “theater” and demagoguery, while warning Haitians not to fall for the ploy.

“The areas they occupied have not been rebuilt, the gangs have not been dismantled, and the insecurity has not yet been resolved,” warned the union, known as SPNH-17. “The main victims of this programmed insecurity cannot return home without justice being rendered, without reparations being obtained, without security being restored.”

The spokesman for the Haitian national police went even further, warning returnees that they could become accomplices of the gangs as they seek to continue to fight authorities.

‘It’s Gaza’

In their warnings, Haitian authorities have inadvertently admitted that they cannot guarantee the safety of returnees.

“Our position is clear, we cannot encourage the displaced, the people who are in the camps ... to return home,” Jacques Amboise, the spokesman for the Transitional Presidential Council, said during an interview on Radio Tele Métropole. It is the very group who are calling for people to come back, he explained, who forced them out in the first place.

Amboise referenced images pouring in from Solino, where a large police presence among its residents allowed the neighborhood to resist a gang takeover until this year. Like Delmas 30, it’s now a rubble-strewn wasteland of burnt cars, bullet-riddled buildings and scorched, even bombed-out buildings.

“Everything is destroyed, Everything is burned. They have not left anything for the people who have been displaced,” Amboise said. “When you look at Solino, it’s Gaza — a place where bombs are dropping practically every single day.”

Still, for some residents, the conditions inside the camps are more than they can continue to bear.

More than 11% – 1.3 million – of Haiti’s population is currently displaced, according to the United Nations. And of those who have been forced to flee their homes — some multiple times — one in eight are children.

That reality, along with life in a soiled, inhumane camp with no tarp, no access to drinking water, has made it difficult for some to turn their backs on the offer.

“The way we are living in the camps, it’s not good,” said Gertrand Gerson, as he visited Delmas 30. “This is why, today, we want to return to our homes.”

Gerson believes the gangs have retreated.

“I’ve yet to see anyone with a gun, anywhere I’ve passed,” he said, while acknowledging gunshots can still be heard from a group nearby. “Right now, we’re in an evaluation phase. We’re looking at everything.”

“We are asking that the State takes its responsibility, to come into these areas and come assess the destruction,” Gerson said. “We are asking national and international organizations to come and show solidarity with us.”

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