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


Fox News
18 minutes ago
- Fox News
Washington Post editorial admits colleges must take 'strenuous action' to restore free exchange of ideas
Harvard may win its legal battle against the Trump administration, but the fight to restore confidence in higher education as defenders of the "free exchange of ideas" would still be far from over, The Washington Post editorial board wrote on Tuesday. "In the past decade, trust in higher education has dropped precipitously. Ten years ago, a robust majority of Americans told Gallup they had a 'great deal' or 'quite a lot' of confidence in higher education; today, only one-third of Americans say the same," the editorial stated, highlighting similar concerns over an uptick in those who say they have "very little" or "no" confidence in higher education. That percentage rose to 32% from 10% a decade ago. Such discontent with higher education has created opportunities for Republicans to seize on the trend and "attack the foundations of academic independence," the board argued. A cocktail of problems, ranging from free speech concerns to rising costs and lower returns on investment, was said to have fed into the growing distrust. In one corner, conservative faculty members have reported self-censoring due to fear of how others might respond to their opinions. The Post argued this isn't isolated to one group, however, and that left-wing voices are also choosing to stay quiet when controversial topics are discussed. "In an academic community in which 'diversity statements' are required of new hires (and professors can be denied jobs merely for criticizing them), university administrations and disciplines issue official statements embracing social justice causes, journal editors apologize for or withdraw papers that offend the left, and conservative professors are becoming an increasingly endangered species, even moderates or those on the center-left can reasonably wonder what they're allowed to say, and universities can seem drastically out of step with mainstream society," the editorial said. The editorial board went on to say that institutions of higher education lack a solid foundation to demand that the government respect their "academic freedom" unless they demand the same from their own teachers and leaders. "The worst of this political fever might be behind us, but academia will have to take strenuous action to restore its reputation as defenders of the free exchange of ideas…" "Renaming the diversity, equity and inclusion office will not suffice; they need to foster a campus environment in which the frank discussion of ideas is the core value. If they do not, they will find the public yawning as conservative attacks intensify and courts struggle to contain the damage," the Post's editorial board continued.

USA Today
19 minutes ago
- USA Today
About 100 National Endowment for the Humanities employees laid off, union says
About 100 National Endowment for the Humanities employees laid off, union says About 2/3 of National Endowment for the Humanities employees were laid off Tuesday. The agency plans to issue half of the number of grants next year Show Caption Hide Caption Active-duty marines deployed for Los Angeles anti-ICE protests President Donald Trump is sending in active-duty Marines to assist law enforcement with immigration protests in Los Angeles, California. Approximately two-thirds of the staff at the National Endowment for the Humanities will lose their jobs when their "reduction in force" goes into effect June 10, according to their union, the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403. "A major agency restructuring is underway without the appropriate planning needed to ensure the continuity of operations," the local said in a statement. "These drastic changes … represent an existential threat to those institutions and individuals who rely on support from NEH to research, preserve, and interpret our shared heritage. The agency's employees were not part of the lawsuit that currently has other reduction in force efforts on hold. The National Endowment for the Humanities did not respond to a request for comment. Less than 60 employees are expected to remain. The agency has a $207 million budget to fund humanities programs such as history, law, literature, philosophy, and linguistics. In early April, NEH terminated more than 1,000 existing grants, including one for the National History Day competition and grants for state humanities councils in all 50 states. The agency has already quietly posted that roughly half of its funding opportunities will not be offered in the next fiscal year or will no longer be offered at all. Among the grants that the agency will no longer offer next year are awards specifically for faculty at Hispanic-serving institutions, tribal institutions, training for K-12 and higher education teachers and studies on endangered languages and the experiences of war. The preserved grants include projects for the country's 250th anniversary, including a statue garden of famous Americans.


The Hill
33 minutes ago
- The Hill
Eurasia is the future — the US needs to get on board
A major discovery of rare earth elements in central Kazakhstan earlier this year sent a jolt through global markets and policymaking circles, with early estimates suggesting it could place the country among the world's top three holders of rare earth reserves. As the Trump administration scrambles to secure alternatives to China's near-monopoly over these critical materials, used in modern technology such as smartphones, electric cars and computers, the spotlight is once again turning to a region long overlooked by Washington: the post-Soviet Turkic world. These Turkic nations — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan — are unfamiliar to most Americans. Yet U.S. officials have long recognized the region's value, measured in energy, strategic minerals, rare earth elements and alternative supply routes. For many thorny reasons, Washington has failed to establish firm allies there. Diplomatic presence tells the story: while Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin have visited Central Asia 14 and 83 times, respectively, since taking office, no U.S. president has visited any Turkic nation besides Turkey. And now the U.S. has fallen behind. Russia, China and the European Union have all successfully made inroads in the Turkic world in recent years. Moscow, which has traditionally dominated the region, has largely taken control of Uzbekistan's gas industry, while partnering with Kazakhstan on gas and oil exports and nuclear technology for a planned power plant. In 2023, China increased trade with Central Asia by 27 percent from the year prior while signing strategic partnerships with Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. And the EU recently held a large summit with Central Asian countries in Uzbekistan, announcing it would invest $12 billion in the region. These global powers understand the stakes. Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan together hold 6.5 percent of global gas reserves. Turkmenistan ranks sixth worldwide in gas, and Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are major oil producers. And over the past several months, Astana has massively exceeded OPEC-plus production targets without signs of slowing. But most important today is the region's supply of minerals and rare earth elements. Besides Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan also has significant reserves and recently invested $2.6 billion to develop mineral extraction. Both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan also have large reserves of strategic minerals with military, economic and technological uses, like gold, uranium, copper, tungsten, silicon, lithium and titanium. Given Central Asia's large reserves, Washington should invest in refining and mining rare earth elements, to break Beijing's dominance. Refining is particularly important, as these countries lack the ability to refine important strategic minerals like lithium, uranium, nickel and cobalt and often do so in China or Russia. To pave the way for such investment, Congress should consider granting the Turkic world Permanent Normal Trade Relations status. Besides having valuable resources, the region plays an important role in supply routes. During the height of the ancient Silk Road's importance, the Turkic world glued the continent together, serving as a thoroughfare between China, India and Europe. Today, it may be resuming its historic role as a bridge between the East and West, as the Middle Corridor gains in popularity — a transit route from East Asia to Europe bypassing both Russia and Iran. U.S. officials have spoken of the importance of the Middle Corridor in the past, and last year, Washington and Europe signed a Memorandum of Understanding to further develop the route. Such developments give the U.S. a clear opportunity. Should Washington start seriously developing the corridor, it would give Kazakhstani energy a bypass through Azerbaijan while weakening Russia's hold on Kazakhstan. An important step would be brokering a final peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan, widening the corridor and giving an alternative to Georgia, which has become closer to Russia in recent years. Many Turkic leaders, including former Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev, former Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev and former Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev, have spoken about decreasing their outward reliance by forming a Turkic bloc. The bloc would represent a total of roughly 175 million inhabitants, with a GDP of some $1.9 trillion — about 95 percent of the Russian GDP, and a growth rate 2 percent higher than the global average. Currently, Turkic countries have deepened cooperation through the Organization of Turkic States. Should Turkic countries increase cooperation further, they will be better able to dictate their own terms. Although Turkey was once expected to lead a unified Turkic bloc, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Islamist policies and Ankara's focus on the Arab world have alienated key regional powers. The secular Turkic governments are wary of ideological influence, and of becoming subordinate to Ankara. This has led to a leadership vacuum — although possibly not for long. After the conclusion of the 2020 Karabakh war with Armenia, Azerbaijan has begun to position itself along with Kazakhstan as a leader of the Turkic world. Both countries hold the largest reserves of energy and minerals and are most crucial to trade routes. Azerbaijan is located on the very bottleneck between Iran and Russia that crosses the Middle Corridor. Kazakhstan's location makes it the most feasible country for Chinese products to cross over to Europe. The U.S. must take the Turkic world seriously, and soon — not just in words, but with a presidential visit, sustained investment and a new Silk Road strategy. Joseph Epstein is director of the Turan Research Center, a nonpartisan research program at the Yorktown Institute focused on the Turkic and Persian worlds.