About 200 Haitians marched in the capital city of Port-Au-Prince on Monday, July 31, just days after an American nurse and her daughter were kidnapped in Haiti. The protests were meant to express anger over not only the kidnapping, but the worsening gang violence in the city.

Alix Dorsainvil of New Hampshire works for El Roi Haiti, a nonprofit Christian ministry. She was working at a clinic in Haiti when armed men broke in.

“I can’t explain 100% but I was inside and a man told me to relax. I couldn’t understand what he was saying to me, then he pulled out his weapon,” Lormina Louima, a patient waiting for a check-up at the time of the kidnapping, said July 31. “When I saw the gun, I was so scared… I said, ‘I don’t want to see this, let me go.’”

According to some members of the local community, the unidentified men asked for $1 million in ransom, a standard practice of Haitian gangs who commit a kidnapping. However, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller wouldn’t say if the abductors had made demands.

“I just think it would be inappropriate to comment on details. You shouldn’t read into that one way or the other what the answer might be,” Miller said at his July 31 daily briefing. “But because it’s an ongoing law enforcement situation, those are obviously quite sensitive and I just don’t want to comment on.”

According to figures from the local nonprofit Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights, hundreds of kidnappings have happened in Haiti in 2023 alone. The same day of the American nurse’s kidnapping, the State Department advised Americans to avoid travel in Haiti and ordered nonemergency personnel to leave.

“Kidnapping is widespread, and victims regularly include U.S. citizens. Kidnappers may use sophisticated planning or take advantage of unplanned opportunities, and even convoys have been attacked,” the department wrote in its advisory. “Kidnapping cases often involve ransom negotiations and U.S. citizen victims have been physically harmed during kidnappings. Victim’s families have paid thousands of dollars to rescue their family members.”

A day before the kidnapping, local police evicted families that had taken shelter in front of the U.S. embassy gates in Port-au-Prince after fleeing their homes because of gang violence in their neighborhood. Hundreds took refuge after being forced to leave their homes on Monday, July 24 because of a heavy gunfight in the neighborhood of Tabarre in downtown Port-au-Prince.

“I’ve been on the streets since Saturday. I have no other place to go with my three children. I have no help from their fathers,” one displaced woman said on Wednesday, July 26. Another added “My little brother almost died there; they poured water on his face to check if he was dead. I went crazy, holding a little child of 3 years old in those conditions.”