All offices of the Direction de l’Immigration et de l’Émigration are currently closed across the country and abroad. Reports confirm shutdowns in multiple locations, including Lalue, Musseau, Delmas 31, Pétion-Ville, Les Cayes, and Aquin, as well as at the Haitian embassy in Washington.
The Ministry of the Interior has not yet issued an official statement, but sources indicate the shutdown is due to central servers being offline, halting passport production. The system reportedly requires manual intervention and monitoring to resume operations. A meeting is scheduled to address the situation and prevent further inconvenience to citizens.
This disruption comes after the arrest of the agency’s director, Antoine Jean Simon Fénélon, along with nine other officials during an operation led by the Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire.
According to prosecutor Jean Fritz Patterson Dorval, the individuals are being questioned as part of an investigation into a suspected network involved in issuing fraudulent “real-fake” passports, possibly to foreign nationals. Authorities reportedly carried out an infiltration operation, where an individual obtained a passport using only a photo, exposing weaknesses in the system.
Initial findings show that some tax identification numbers linked to issued passports do not match the actual applicants, reinforcing suspicions of fraud.
