Miami moves ahead of Donald Trump's campaign promise by banning homeless people from sleeping on the streets

In the United States, one of the campaign promises of the next President Donald Trump is to move homeless people from cities to encampments reserved for homeless people outside of cities. A measure already in place in Florida, a Republican state, stronghold of the 47th president.

Since the summer, in Miami, homeless people have no longer been allowed to sleep on the streets. Since his re-election on Wednesday, November 6, Donald Trump has wanted to adapt this measure to the entire United States. Aged 42, Juan has been on the street for a few days in Miami. He hides at night so as not to be spotted by the police. “You see my friend over there, she's petrified of being arrested by the police, he explains. I was working only a few days ago, now that I see what people are going through here, it's horrible. I saw a woman with four children on the street instead of helping her, the cops arrived. If they arrest me, I will spend a day or two in prison. I'm in good shape, I can still get through it, but most of the people around me here can't.”

“The rents are so high”laments Ana. She is part of a volunteer medical center that helps Miami's homeless. “There are no more homeless encampments here, she said.

“Last summer the police destroyed everything. The homeless were chased away. If people are on the street, it's because the rents have become unaffordable.”

Anna, volunteer helping the homeless

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David Peery advocates for the homeless in Miami. “At the end of August, the city of Miami Beach arrested 300 homeless people. They spend half their time there. They keep them for two days, then release them and so on, he explains. Donald Trump's intentions regarding the homeless are, according to him, an alert for democracy. “Donald Trump says that the homeless should be grouped into specific encampments. That's where the attacks on society begin. You start with the most vulnerable, those who no one is protecting, and then you move on to the next ones. Why not… transgender people? Everything suddenly you're quite close to Germany in the 1930s.”

In a long video posted during the campaign Donald Trump emphasizes that the homeless have no right to sleep in parks and on sidewalks, that it will therefore be necessary to care for them and take care of them by regrouping them in what he calls in homeless encampments, tent cities.