Haitian Americans

Have the mass deportations done anything for anyone other than the people who own the private prisons and run the detention centers and profit from the misery of the detainees? Have they done anything for anyone? No.

They've torn apart communities, destroyed families, and haven't even produced more jobs because, as any labor economist will tell you, Immigrants don't take jobs from native-born Americans.

They create jobs for native-born Americans by filling labor needs in key parts of the economy.

Immigration sparks a virtuous cycle which produces more jobs and more income for native-born people.

And it stands to reason that abruptly removing a lot of immigrants will do the opposite.

And that's what we're seeing in all kinds of industries.

The awful campaign against Haitian Americans, for example, is threatening home health care in Florida.

Somali immigrants have revitalized towns in Maine and Minnesota, and those towns will suffer in their absence.

got to get what you got to get.

She was Haitian-American.

African-American, Haitian roots.

Something like that.

You know what? I feel like I was young, probably elementary school age, but I really didn't know the significance or the importance of it, primarily because I was so engulfed in the Haitian community here in Chicago that I didn't know anything else.

So although I was a Haitian American, everything outside of school was Haitian based.

So it just made sense to me, if that makes sense.

So for the viewers that don't know who you are, what was your childhood like? Was this homeschooled church? Like, well.

I'm the fix food kind of person, okay? But I have friends who cook and they're always looking to try Haitian dishes and I'm always trying to bring things, you know, for them to try and they want me to try things.

So we all kind of promote and elevate our cultures.

So I've had a very good experience being a Haitian American here in the United States.

Okay.

The Haitian Times reports that the United States authorities, um, did their third flight deporting people from the United States to Haiti, a place that the State Department warns Americans not to visit because it is unsafe.

They put another 101 Haitian immigrants on a flight to Cap-Haitien, uh, last week.

Uh, it is the third consecutive flight since, um, this deportation, this wave of deportations began, bringing the total to 319 deported on three flights since August.

And this comes as Haiti faces a major security and humanitarian crisis, uh, that is not ending, and that we ourselves have some role, uh, in having exacerbated within, uh, our policies.

Instead, we having this conversation about this, you know, racist administration that's really been cruel to a, a people who came in to really be part of the American dream and to help America.

Yeah, and it is not lost on me that this young man dies in the same community where Donald Trump and JD Vance maligned all of the Haitian, um, immigrants who, as you said, were, were asked to come there because some of the businesses there could not find workers, and they came at the behest of the town of Springfield.

This is the same place where Donald Trump and JD Vance claimed that the Haitian immigrants were eating people's cats and dogs, and it does not, it is not lost on me that this was a double humila- humiliation for this young man who was already part of that nightmare.

Well, yeah, it, it, it is, it is crazy.

And then in round four, the round of 16, defeated the number 14 seed, literally today, y'all.

Eva Jovich, American Eva Jovich, who just outlasted Filipino sensation Alex Ayala in a three-hour 33-game thriller.

Coco defeated Eva Jovich today 6-1, 6-4. to reach the quarterfinals.

And this is absolutely bonkers.

And so it's kind of a big moment, you know, like the second that do-rag comes on, Black audiences know exactly what they're looking at.

That's never been the case in a tennis press room, which is breaking barriers, providing representation.

This is a reminder, Naomi is Japanese and Haitian American.

This is her fully occupying a Black cultural space in a sport that spent decades uncomfortable with athletes doing exactly that.

I'm Evan Osnos, sitting in for David Remnick.

For more than 30 years, Edwidge Danticat has written about the experiences of Haitians and Haitian Americans.

She's written fiction, memoir, and journalism.

And in The New Yorker, Danticat has covered the impact of the Trump administration's campaign of mass deportation.

Welcome back to Politics Nation on MSNOW.

This week, the Haitian American community that's already dealing with the impact of the Trump administration's mass deportation efforts was rocked by another tragedy.

In Ohio, Pierre Demas Bell, a 20-year-old college student and Haitian immigrant, died in an apparent suicide after he was forced by the Trump administration to wear an ankle monitor.

His family says he felt depressed and humiliated by his treatments.

Like, it sounds insurmountable or impossible.

Mrs. Camor herself is a Haitian American.

[laughs]

And spent quite a good time in Haiti.

Discriminating against Haitian Americans.

[laughs] Right.

So the judge actually, when they were doing that line of questioning, the judge stop and says, started asking her question, um, "Do you speak Creole? Are you Haitian?" And she said to her, well, she's Haitian.