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Football legend Tim Tebow and his foundation teamed up with a nonprofit team of veteran commandos to evacuate dozens of orphans with disabilities from Haiti, but thousands remain trapped in the troubled island nation.
The operation comes as the beleaguered nation faces danger and famine following the release by gangs of thousands of prisoners and the sudden resignation of the prime minister. Tebow, long renowned for his charity work in troubled nations, worked with the Sentinel Foundation, which helped evacuate Americans from Afghanistan in 2021, to get the kids to safety in Jamaica.
“Today we are so deeply grateful,” an official of the Tim Tebow Foundation, who gave only the name Steve, said of the operation. “We want to express our deep gratitude to the Jamaican Ministries of Health and Jamaican National Security and Foreign Affairs for accepting 59 children from Haiti who are severely disabled and are now relocated from danger into a safe, secure new community.”
The group also credited the state of Florida, where Tebow starred for University of Florida in the early 2000s, and Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla.
The two foundations joined forces to provide operational support and funding, with guidance from Mills, who has staged two other rescue operations from Haiti as the country’s crime crisis remains severe.
“But we didn’t know how we were going to do in the field until we did it,” he said.
The U.S. State Department also evacuated at least 30 Americans from the island nation on a government-chartered flight earlier this week after delays to taking action as the crisis initially grew worse. An official told Fox News the number might have been as high as 47.
The team as they actively worked through dozens of solutions to enter into Haiti as borders were shut down and restrictions tightened around Haiti. (The Sentinel Foundation)
The U.S. government went on to help over 230 U.S. citizens evacuate from Haiti over the following week
“We will continue to monitor demand from U.S. citizens for assistance in departing Haiti on a real-time basis,” the State Department said in a statement, reiterating that Americans should not travel to Haiti.
The U.S. military last week flew in additional forces to bolster security and evacuate non-essential personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Haiti, which is located in a neighborhood largely controlled by gangs.
“There’s 30,000 children in Haiti that belong to nonprofit organizations that are run by American citizens,” TJ said. “Most of them have no leadership there right now because everyone’s had to leave.”
“We were able to successfully evacuate 59 of those 30,000 kids. Of those 30,000, not all those kids have somewhere to go, and not all those kids have special needs, or are high risk,” he said. “We picked the most high-risk children that we could, that had the most likely chance of success and went with it, because I’d rather rescue some than none.”
