Tampa nonprofit helps rescue 2 adopted children from escalating violence in Haiti
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Two families have been united with their adopted children who were trapped in Haiti's escalating crisis.
'It's everything we could have ever imagined,' said Angela Howell-Edgerly. 'It's just a dream come true. It really is.'
Gov. DeSantis proposes $1K rebate checks to cover Florida homeowners' property tax
The Gray Bull Rescue Foundation embarked on a mission to help two 6-year-old girls escape the island nation as violence continues to erupt.
'We've been waiting for this for six years,' said Brock Blankenship. 'It's so long to finally have this happen. It's beyond anything we could have imagined.'
Their escape from Haiti comes at a critical time.
'The human rights situation in Haiti has reached yet another crisis point,' said UN human rights chief Volker Türk in a social media post. 'Gangs are uniting to spread terror, armed with powerful weapons. The illicit flow of arms into the country must stop. The Haitian people cannot be forgotten. Their suffering must end.'
The unrest has been weighing heavy on several adoptive families, especially over the last year when gang violence reached new heights in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince.
'The current condition of the country warrants immediate action,' Howell-Edgerly said. 'They threatened to come back and kill the children and the nannies. We scrambled to try and get help, and at first, we couldn't get help.'
Howell-Edgerly and her husband spent seven years navigating Haiti's adoption process for their daughter, Rosie.
However, last March, her effort to unite with Rosie in America came to a standstill when the government collapsed.
Uncertainty turned into fear when Rosie's living conditions became more dire each day.
'Some children have had to flee orphanages, including our daughter, due to surrounding gunfire and bullets penetrating walls,' Howell-Edgerly said.
Howell-Edgerly contacted the Grey Bull Rescue Foundation to assist.
The nonprofit organization is a veteran-led, international rescue agency based in Tampa.
Grey Bull Rescue specializes in rescuing Americans from conflict zones across the world when the U.S. Government does not have access or a presence.
'Now, after a last-minute clearance and a high-stakes rescue, these families will be together,' read a statement from the Grey Bull Rescue Foundation. 'Their journey has been filled with heartbreak, resilience, and unwavering determination.'
However, more than a dozen adopted children are still trapped in Haiti and waiting to be evacuated to the U.S.
Adoptive families are putting pressure on elected officials and the State Department to expedite the process.
'There are means to do so,' said Christopher Edgerly. 'They did it last year when they evacuated nearly 40 children. They could do the same thing today. They just seem to be slow walking everything right now.'
For more information about Grey Bull Rescue Foundation, click here.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
ABC News Suspends Terry Moran After He Posts Online Calling Donald Trump's Adviser a 'World-Class Hater'
ABC News made the decision to suspend their correspondent, Terry Moran, after he shared a critical social media post about President Donald Trump's adviser, Stephen Miller "He's a world-class hater. You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment," he wrote in the since-deleted post on X White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt asked ABC "how they plan to hold Terry accountable" just before his suspension was handed downABC News reporter Terry Moran has been suspended from the air after sharing an incendiary social media post about one of President Donald Trump's key advisers. In the early hours of Sunday, June 8, the 65-year-old senior national correspondent took to X to share a post about Stephen Miller, the president's homeland security adviser and deputy chief of staff for policy. Moran referred to both Miller and Trump as "world-class hater[s]" in the post, which has since been deleted. A spokesperson for ABC News commented on the post in a statement shared with PEOPLE, noting that Moran "has been suspended pending further evaluation." 'ABC News stands for objectivity and impartiality in its news coverage and does not condone subjective personal attacks on others. The post does not reflect the views of ABC News and violated our standards," their statement noted. Moran took aim at Miller and the president in the post, which was shared shortly after midnight on Sunday. Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. "The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism," Moran wrote. "Yes, he is one of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of the Trumpist movement and translates them into police. But that's not what's interesting about Miller." The reporter continued: "It's not brains. It's bile. Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He's a world-class hater. You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate." "Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred is only a means to an end, and that end his his own glorification [sic]. That's his spiritual nourishment," he concluded. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt referred to the post as "a rampage against Stephen Miller" in a response on X. "This is unhinged and unacceptable," she wrote, adding, "We have reached out to @ABC to inquire about how they plan to hold Terry accountable." Vice President J.D. Vance also referred to the message as an "absolutely vile smear" in a message on the social media platform. "It's dripping with hatred. Remember that every time you watch ABC's coverage of the Trump administration," Vance wrote. "As it happens, I know Stephen quite well. And he's motivated by love of country. He's motivated by a fear that people like Terry Moran make rules that normal Americans have to follow, but well-connected people don't."Vance wrote, "It's why he fought so hard to get President Trump elected and why he works so hard to implement the agenda." He further commented that the news network "should apologize to Stephen." Moran's post comes a few weeks after he sat down for an exclusive interview with Trump, marking the end of his first 100 days in office since being inaugurated for a second time in January 2025. During the interview, Trump complained that the reporter was "not being very nice" after Moran informed the president that an image of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legally protected father who was accidentally deported to El Salvador earlier this year, had been photoshopped. 'I picked you because, frankly, I had never heard of you, but that's okay,' Trump said. Another viral moment from the interview came when Moran asked Trump what the Declaration of Independence meant to him. "Well, it means exactly what it says, it's a declaration. A declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot. And it's something very special to our country," the president replied as Moran stared at him with visible confusion on his face. Miller attracted attention in early May during a press briefing about the Department of Education and schools. Trump's advisor took issue with critical race theory, saying that a nation cannot be "successful" if it "teach[es] its children to hate themselves and their country." "Children will be taught to love America. Children will be taught to be patriots," he said. "Children will be taught civic values for schools that want federal taxpayer funding." Read the original article on People
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Corporation for Public Broadcasting can keep board members despite judge's ruling
By Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) -A federal judge said that three board members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting can keep their seats, even as he denied the nonprofit a preliminary injunction to block U.S. President Donald Trump from removing them. In a decision on Sunday, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington, D.C. said the nonprofit recently used indirect authority it obtained from Congress to protect its independence, by changing its bylaws to make it harder to remove directors at will, including by Trump. "The President is not free to remove directors and then unilaterally to appoint their replacements, thereby using his power to remove as an effective tool for altering board policy," Moss wrote. "Rather, the President's appointment authority is tempered by the requirement that he proceed only with the advice and consent of the Senate." Moss nonetheless said the CPB was unlikely to prevail on the merits, and could not show irreparable harm because it could still function and "in all likelihood" has blocked Trump from exercising unilateral authority to remove board members. Created by Congress in 1967, the CPB provides financial support for the Public Broadcasting Service, National Public Radio and more than 1,500 locally managed public radio and TV stations. It sued after Trump fired three of its five directors -- Diane Kaplan, Laura Ross and Thomas Rothman - ostensibly without providing a reason. PBS and NPR are also suing to block the Trump administration from canceling their federal funding. "We are very pleased that the court recognized CPB is an independent, non-profit corporation, free from governmental control or influence," CPB President Patricia Harrison said in a statement. Harrison said the nonprofit looks forward to continuing its work "to ensure accurate, unbiased and nonpartisan public media is available for all Americans." CPB received $535 million of federal funding for its current fiscal year. The White House and many Republicans have argued that the government should not provide funding to support programming that they consider too liberal. A White House spokesperson on Monday said CPB is "creating media to support a particular political party on the taxpayers' dime. Therefore, the President is exercising his lawful authority to limit funding to NPR and PBS." The case is Corporation for Public Broadcasting et al v Trump et al, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia, No. 25-01305.
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Anti-Gang Drone Attacks Won't Put Haiti Back Together Again
In the first five months of 2025, a special police task force in Haiti, reportedly aided by private military contractors, has used small commercial drones armed with improvised explosives in dozens of attacks targeting the gangs that threaten to take over the country. Several hundred people have reportedly been killed in the drone strikes, though the police have yet to assassinate any of the top gang leaders, which is one of their stated intentions. Haitian gangs now control a large majority of the country, and a few weeks ago I wrote that absent a significant increase in material support for the country's government, they will win the battle against government forces 'within months if not weeks.' Can these explosive drone attacks change the course of the conflict enough to upend that analysis? Given how important drone warfare has become to military strategy, and how rapidly military strategists are adapting to those changes, the results in Haiti matter—not only for Haiti, but for every weak state struggling to fend off organized criminal groups and insurgencies that often outgun them. Throughout the 2010s, the U.S. government used armed drones to hit high-value terrorist targets throughout the Middle East and North Africa, writing the playbook for how great powers can use drone warfare to target small cells of enemies. The effort was disruptive to the leadership of terrorist organizations, but it required significant intelligence and expensive technology. It also came with high costs, causing high levels of civilian casualties and collateral damage that often undermined the broader effort. To get more in-depth news and expert analysis on global affairs from WPR, sign up for our free Daily Review newsletter. In the past two years, Yemen's Houthis have used much cheaper armed drones to disrupt global shipping lanes in the Red Sea, a demonstration of terrorist groups using these new weapons platforms for global economic impact. Countering these attacks has proven difficult for the U.S. and its allies, as the weapons needed to stop the drones cost far more than the drones themselves. Last week, Ukraine's incredibly innovative armed drone attack took out numerous Russian aircraft that could be used to deliver nuclear weapons. Though the results of that attack are still inconclusive, Ukraine's effort suggests that drones can provide an asymmetric advantage for a small country invaded by a much larger rival, even one that is a nuclear power. Ukraine's ability to inflict serious tactical damage on Russia has helped keep Kyiv in the fight and affected Moscow's strategic capabilities, but has yet to bring the war in Ukraine closer to its end. These examples show how drones have altered the balance of military power in conflicts involving a strong government targeting terrorists, terrorists targeting global shipping lanes and a weak state targeting a strong state. Haiti is now testing whether drones can be effective when a very weak state fights organized criminal groups that have morphed into an insurgency. In the best-case scenario that Haitian officials have used in trying to sell the strategy through the media, the drones will manage to kill some gang leaders and force the other gangs to slow their offensive due to fear of future attacks. The theory is that the time it takes gang leaders to update their calculus of the conflict and devise a counterstrategy will give the government breathing room to regroup its forces. It will then mount a larger offensive to retake territory from the gangs, which reportedly control 85 percent of the country, including most of the capital, Port-au-Prince. At that point, the government can begin to restore its sovereign authority across Haiti. That seems overly ambitious for several reasons. First, the drone strikes have been tactically imprecise. It's unclear how many gang members have been killed compared to civilians, but what's certain is that the drones have yet to hit any of the high-value targets, or HVTs, that they are purportedly aiming for. Doing so requires a level of intelligence that Haiti's security forces, as well as the limited multinational mission and private contractors supporting them, lack. In one instance, a gang leader posted a video on social media immediately following a strike mocking the government for missing him. Second, strategies focused on eliminating HVTs are far from guaranteed to work and can even backfire in some cases. When Mexico has targeted cartel leaders in recent years, the result has been an atomization of criminal groups that leads to further violence. While the Haitian gang leaders are central to the gangs' push for political control of the country, removing a few of them will not prevent the rise of others. Splitting the gang alliances apart by killing leaders may slow their final takeover of the country, but it could also lead to internecine warfare among the gangs that increases the threat they pose to the government and to Haitian civilians. Third, the country must be concerned with potential retribution by the gangs. At least one gang leader has suggested that the gangs would now attempt to acquire off-the-shelf drone technology and explosives themselves to counter the new government offensive, which would escalate the conflict and lead to greater civilian suffering. The gangs have demonstrated an ability to import plenty of weapons into Haiti despite an arms embargo meant to limit their ability to do so, and it's unlikely the embargo would be any more effective with regard to drone technology. Haitian government forces would be even more vulnerable to this type of drone warfare than the gangs, given their fixed assets in the form of government buildings and the paucity of anti-drone options available to them. Fourth, and most importantly, killing the gang leadership means little if there is not a capable state that can fill the gap left behind if and when those gangs are defeated. Haiti needs a government and rule of law, and no drone program can provide that. The Kenyan-led multinational force that is supposed to help secure Haiti remains underfunded and understaffed. And the government has no resources to provide the Haitian population with food or housing, let alone education and health care. In light of this, we should see this last-ditch effort to use drones against the gangs as a sign of the Haitian government's weakness, not strength. It is an inexpensive and asymmetric option that can perhaps disrupt the gangs' command and control for a few extra weeks. But drones are not a replacement for the personnel needed to provide governance and stability. Choosing to bomb targets with drones because it's cheaper than funding the state capacity needed to put Haiti back on its feet is a dystopian version of 21st-century counterinsurgency warfare that is doomed to fail. James Bosworth is the founder of Hxagon, a firm that does political risk analysis and bespoke research in emerging and frontier markets, as well as a global fellow at the Wilson Center's Latin America Program. He has two decades of experience analyzing politics, economics and security in Latin America and the Caribbean. The post Anti-Gang Drone Attacks Won't Put Haiti Back Together Again appeared first on World Politics Review.
