8 are missing, including an Irish missionary, after gunmen storm a Haiti orphanage

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Eight people, including an Irish missionary and a 3-year-old child, remained missing on Monday after gunmen stormed an orphanage in Haiti, the latest attack in an area controlled by a powerful collection of armed gangs.

Authorities scrambled to relocate dozens of children and staff from the Saint-Hélène orphanage, run by Nos Petits Frères et Sœurs, an international charity with offices in Mexico and France. The orphanage cares for more than 240 children, according to its website.

No one has so far claimed responsibility for the attack early on Sunday. The area is controlled by a gang federation known as “ Viv Ansanm,” which the United States this year designated a foreign terrorist organization.

Among those abducted was Gena Heraty, an Irish missionary who has worked in Haiti since 1993 and oversaw the orphanage's special needs program for children and adults. She was assaulted in 2013 when suspects broke into the orphanage and killed her colleague, according to Irish media.

Her family issued a statement saying they were “absolutely devastated” by Sunday's kidnappings: “The situation is evolving and deeply worrying."

Sunday marked the latest high-profile kidnapping involving a foreign missionary. In 2021, the 400 Mawozo gang kidnapped 17 missionaries, including five children, from a U.S.-based organization in Ganthier, east of the capital, Port-au-Prince. The majority were held captive for 61 days.

Sunday's kidnapping took place in Kenscoff, a once peaceful community in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. The doors to the orphanage remained closed on Monday as Haiti’s Institute of Social Welfare and Research worked with UNICEF to identify sites where children and employees could be relocated.

The lush green and incredibly steep mountains where the orphanage is located has been under attack by heavily armed gangs since January. The latest attack over the weekend forced farmers in the area to flee.

“We can’t work,” said 41-year-old farmer Sala Désire, who fled his home and carried a small oven up a mountain as he gathered his belongings and prepared for a 30-minute trek uphill.

Joceline Souffrant, 52, said she would follow him shortly.

“Everyone is running,” she said. “We can’t say in the area because of the shooting.”

Simon Harris, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, said in a statement that the kidnappings of Heraty and the others were “deeply worrying," and called for their immediate release.

In a past interview with the Irish Independent newspaper, Heraty recalled being threatened with death when suspects broke into the orphanage in 2013.

“They were quite aggressive. One had a hammer, one had a gun,” she said. Heraty said her colleague was killed with a hammer after he rushed to help her and others.

“The last place you would expect a violent death to happen in Haiti would be in a house with special-needs people," she said. "Life is just not fair. We know that. We just have to accept it.”

At least 175 people in Haiti were reported kidnapped from April to the end of June of this year, with 37% of those cases occurring in Port-au-Prince.

The United Nations said a majority of those kidnappings were blamed on the Grand Ravine and Village de Dieu gangs, which form part of the Viv Ansanm federation.

A woman walks past the Saint-Helene orphanage in the Kenscoff neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Aug. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

Police officers patrol the area near the Saint-Helene orphanage in the Kenscoff neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Aug. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

Residents flee their homes to escape the gang violence in the Kenscoff neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Aug. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

Workers enter the Saint-Helene orphanage in the Kenscoff neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Aug. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

Police officers patrol the area near the Saint-Helene orphanage in the Kenscoff neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Aug. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

A federal appeals panel on Thursday reversed a lower court decision that released former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil from an immigration jail, bringing the government one step closer to detaining and ultimately deporting the Palestinian activist.

The three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t decide the key issue in Khalil’s case: whether the Trump administration’s effort to throw Khalil out of the U.S. over his campus activism and criticism of Israel is unconstitutional.

But in its 2-1 decision, the panel ruled a federal judge in New Jersey didn’t have jurisdiction to decide the matter at this time. Federal law requires the case to fully move through the immigration courts first, before Khalil can challenge the decision, they wrote.

“That scheme ensures that petitioners get just one bite at the apple — not zero or two,” the panel wrote. “But it also means that some petitioners, like Khalil, will have to wait to seek relief for allegedly unlawful government conduct.”

Thursday’s decision marked a major win for the Trump administration’s sweeping campaign to detain and deport noncitizens who joined protests against Israel.

Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security Department spokesperson, called the ruling “a vindication of the rule of law.”

In a statement, she said the department will “work to enforce his lawful removal order” and encouraged Khalil to “self-deport now before he is arrested, deported, and never given a chance to return.”

It was not immediately clear whether the government would seek to detain Khalil, a legal permanent resident, again while his legal challenges continue.

In a statement distributed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Khalil called the appeals ruling “deeply disappointing."

“The door may have been opened for potential re-detainment down the line, but it has not closed our commitment to Palestine and to justice and accountability," he said. "I will continue to fight, through every legal avenue and with every ounce of determination, until my rights, and the rights of others like me, are fully protected.”

Baher Azmy, one of Khalil's lawyers, with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the ruling was “contrary to rulings of other federal courts."

“Our legal options are by no means concluded, and we will fight with every available avenue,” he said.

The ACLU said the Trump administration cannot lawfully re-detain Khalil until the order takes formal effect, which won't happen while he can still immediately appeal.

Khalil’s lawyers can request that the panel's decision be set aside and the matter reconsidered by a larger group of judges on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, or they can go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

An outspoken leader of the pro-Palestinian movement at Columbia, Khalil was arrested last March. He then spent three months detained in a Louisiana immigration jail, missing the birth of his first child.

Federal officials have accused Khalil of leading activities “aligned to Hamas,” though they have not presented evidence to support the claim and have not accused him of criminal conduct. They also accused Khalil, 31, of failing to disclose information on his green card application.

The government justified the arrest under a seldom-used statute that allows for the expulsion of noncitizens whose beliefs are deemed to pose a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests.

In June, a federal judge in New Jersey ruled that justification would likely be declared unconstitutional and ordered Khalil released.

President Donald Trump's administration appealed that ruling, arguing the deportation decision should fall to an immigration judge, rather than a federal court.

Khalil has dismissed the allegations as “baseless and ridiculous,” framing his arrest and detention as a “direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”

New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, said on social media Thursday that Khalil should remain free.

“Last year’s arrest of Mahmoud Khalil was more than just a chilling act of political repression, it was an attack on all of our constitutional rights,” Mamdani wrote on X. “Now, as the crackdown on pro-Palestinian free speech continues, Mahmoud is being threatened with rearrest. Mahmoud is free — and must remain free.”

Judge Arianna Freeman dissented Thursday, writing that her colleagues were holding Khalil to the wrong legal standard. Khalil, she wrote, is raising “now-or-never claims” that can be handled at the district court level, even though his immigration case isn't complete.

Both judges who ruled against Khalil, Thomas Hardiman and Stephanos Bibas, were Republican appointees. President George W. Bush appointed Hardiman to the 3rd Circuit, while Trump appointed Bibas. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, appointed Freeman.

The two-judge majority rejected Freeman's worry that their decision would leave Khalil with no remedy for unconstitutional immigration detention, even if he later can appeal.

“But our legal system routinely forces petitioners — even those with meritorious claims — to wait to raise their arguments," the judges wrote.

The decision comes as an appeals board in the immigration court system weighs a previous order that found Khalil could be deported to Algeria, where he maintains citizenship through a distant relative, or Syria, where he was born in a refugee camp to a Palestinian family.

His attorneys have said he faces mortal danger if forced to return to either country.

Associated Press writers Larry Neumeister and Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this story.

FILE - Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil holds a news conference outside Federal Court on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025 in Philadelphia (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)