Haitians are settling along the California-Mexico border despite concerns about anti-immigrant policies

Pierre and her daughter are among more than 300,000 Haitians who have been granted temporary humanitarian parole – and the opportunity to seek asylum – in the US since January 2023.

The vast majority who come through Tijuana and San Diego continue on to work or loved ones in other cities, but a few thousand, including Pierre, settle here.

But even as they work to build safer new lives in the U.S., Haitians are facing a new kind of crisis: the barrage of anti-immigrant rhetoric from Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign, which last month targeted Haitians in Ohio attacked with outlandish and outlandish statements. false accusations of eating other people’s pets.

This week, Trump told NewsNation that if elected, he would revoke Temporary Protected Status, a humanitarian legal protection, and deport Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio.

“Absolutely, I would withdraw it,” he said. “What’s happening there is terrible… You have to remove the people. We cannot destroy our country.”

Trump’s attacks put Pierre on edge. And while his claim that Haitians made meals from cats and dogs was patently untrue, she felt the need to refute it.

“That’s something I’ve never done before. Never,” she said. “I don’t know where this comes from. But my parents raised me well. I would never do something like that in my life.”

‘It can take years for the scars to heal’

Across the street from the university, a group of Haitians gathered during their lunch break in the parking lot of El Super, a supermarket specializing in Latin American products. One man served generous portions of rice and stewed crab from pots in the back of his minivan while others chatted.

Even though it was weeks after Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, first made the anti-Haitian insults, the men still expressed frustration and fear, said Jeef Nelson, a community advocate with the nonprofit Haitian Bridge Alliance , who joined the conversation.

“They feel hurt. They feel betrayed when they hear statements like that coming out of a presidential candidate’s mouth,” Nelson said. “It will have ugly consequences for the Haitian people. And it can take years for the scars to heal.”

But Zachee St. Vil, a father of three who runs a small moving company in San Diego, said he’s seen much worse. While standing in the shadows, he credited Trump’s comments about the election and decided not to let them affect him.

“There is the Democrat and the Republican. One says one thing, and the other says another,” St. Vil, 52, said in Spanish. “But in a democracy, once the voting is over, the country unites and peace can return. We all need peace.”

Peace has not always been self-evident in St. Vil’s life. He said he left Haiti 25 years ago when police brutality and insecurity became unbearable. For years he had found a home in Venezuela, but then that country also fell into economic and political collapse. So four years ago, he and his family traveled on to California, crossing the border illegally. They were eventually granted protection from deportation and given work permits – but no path to citizenship – under a humanitarian program called Temporary Protected Status.

Then disaster struck. St. Vil’s son, a popular and promising basketball player, drowned during a trip to the beach just days after graduating from high school. Two years later, St. Vil is still gripped by grief. Still, he said he has found San Diego a welcoming place that finally offers his family a base of security.

“I can build my business here. “I feel safe going out at all hours,” he said. “Compared to other countries, things are a lot better here.”

Haitians are integrated

But during the presidential campaign, Trump and Vance have not walked back their inflammatory racial claims that immigrants are “invading” the country and “poisoning the blood.”

At rallies, Trump has declared that immigrants are “attacking towns and cities” and that predominantly white Midwestern communities “will be transformed into a Third World hellhole.”

San Diego County Supervisor Nora Vargas calls that rhetoric “disgusting.”

“Using this as a talking point to get votes, I think, speaks to the racism that exists,” said Vargas, whose district hugs the border and includes City Heights, one of San Diego’s most diverse neighborhoods and home to a large number of immigrants and migrants. refugees.

“We need to set the record straight that Haitians who are in the United States are integrated,” she said. “They do their job, they participate.”

Today, nearly all Haitians arrive legally at the U.S.-Mexico border through a process established last year by the Biden administration that allows migrants in Mexico to make appointments through a mobile app and be vetted by U.S. border officials for parole . Once in the U.S., they are brought into immigration court proceedings where they can file a claim for asylum.

In Haiti, decades of political instability, dire poverty, natural disasters and weak civil institutions have led to a serious crisis, Amnesty International said this year. Criminal gangs now control most of Port-au-Prince and have unleashed terrifying violence.

“It’s not that people want to leave. But they can’t stay. They cannot see a future in such chaos,” said Nelson of the Haitian Bridge Alliance. “It’s not safe. Everyone lives from day to day, knowing that they could die the next day.”

Nelson came to the U.S. in 2018 when he was invited to be a research assistant for a California professor he met through his job as an office manager at a Haitian university. He said his appointment was extended for six months and he was eventually able to obtain a green card and U.S. citizenship.

Now he is working to support Haitians who have settled in San Diego, as well as newly arrived migrants heading to other destinations. (His organization, Haitian Bridge Alliance, also recently filed a criminal complaint in Ohio against Donald Trump over inflammatory pet-eating allegations.)

A recent report (pdf) on refugees and asylum seekers in San Diego County found that between fall 2020 and summer 2023, between 2,700 and 4,700 Haitians had settled in the area.

However, not all Haitians arriving at the border end up in the small Haitian community of San Diego, US, which is mirrored by a similar community in Tijuana. As of 2016, an estimated 5,000 Haitians have settled there.

‘My American dream has evaporated’

One of them is Vivianne Petit Frere. She left Haiti in 2019 when mass protests over skyrocketing fuel prices led to a political crisis and a crackdown. She first settled in Brazil and then reached Mexico in 2021. The journey — through 10 countries and through the dangerous jungle of the Darien Gap — took five months, she said.

“We came here to get into the US,” she said. “You know everyone has their American dream.”

Three years later, however, Petit Frere has taken root and become an anchor of the Haitian community in Tijuana. She runs a restaurant downtown called Lakou Lakay. The phrase translates from Haitian Creole as the patio or courtyard of a house – a place where people gather.

“Haitians are the best at cooking rice,” said Petit Frere, as he served a plate of rice and beans, fried chicken, fried green plantains and a spicy sauerkraut slaw called pikliz. “I want Mexicans to learn how delicious Haitian food is.”

The restaurant – with aqua green walls, bright yellow beams, blue chairs and photos of Caribbean beaches – is not only a place for Mexicans to get a little taste of Haiti, but also a casual meeting place for Tijuana Haitians, who know they are welcome are. come in and sit down, whether or not they order something. It is also the informal office of Petit Frere.

“I’m a mother, a businesswoman, a student and a social worker,” she said as she opened her laptop at a table in the back. Petit Frere studies social work at the University of Baja California. And she has become the Tijuana community organizer for the Haitian Bridge Alliance.

Earlier that morning, she and her husband delivered a cart full of diapers and other baby supplies to a maternal health clinic that serves migrants of all backgrounds.

“We help other community groups, and they help us,” she said. “We support them with donations, translations, whatever we can. And they provide things like health care and legal aid to Haitian migrants.”

Petit Frere believes Haitians are treated with respect in Tijuana, although she said the Mexican government is sometimes slow to respond to their needs. Still, she has become a legal permanent resident of Mexico, a process that is slightly easier than in the US

In Tijuana she met her husband, Joseph Saint, who is also from Haiti. Together they raise three children from their previous marriages. …and a toddler born in Mexico.

“My son, born in Haiti, came here as a little kid, so now he acts like a Mexican,” she said. “And I also have my Mexican daughter, so I see myself as part of this community. My life is here now.”

When she looks at the United States now, she says she sees a presidential candidate who is stoking fear and loathing toward Haitian immigrants. And she sees a culture in which people’s lives revolve around making money and pursuing material things, rather than building community.

“My American dream has evaporated,” she said. “The United States has so many contradictions. I realized that you never really belong there. … I feel freer here.”