I remember laughing when I watched the now infamous debate between President Trump and Former Vice President Harris when President Trump said “They’re [Haitian people] eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” My parents laughed along with me when I made lighthearted jokes about the ludicrous statement, but it was clearly much more serious to them. The threat that Donald Trump’s words posed towards my own people and culture didn’t register until much later.
It wasn’t until I was scrolling through comments I found on the internet that I realized that many Americans actually believed it. Online, I’d see people reaffirming the statements, writing “They actually do this” and “How did we let these people in” being especially prevalent. The push to deport Haitian immigrants seemed to emerge without warning. For me, it hit close to home—suddenly there was an added edge to the lives of people who I have known since I was a child. It was a change that deepened when Trump was elected and remains now that he has made his way into the Oval Office. But this isn’t the first time this first country has tried to get rid of us.
A Brief History Of Haiti
Located in the Caribbean on the western half of the island Hispaniola, Haiti is a country that hasn’t been truly free since Columbus claimed the island for Spain in December of 1492. The original inhabitants—the Taino people—were enslaved and sent to work in gold mines where they suffered from inhumane working conditions and diseases brought from Spanish settlers. After their population was almost entirely enslaved or exterminated from the island, African slaves were brought to take their place around 1570.
The Spanish kept control over the entire island until 1697, when Spain ceded the western side of the island to France; the land that would come to be known as Haiti was named Saint-Domingue, and quickly became one of the most valuable French colonies. The African slaves were used for harvesting the island’s rich resources, including coffee, cocoa, cotton, and, most notably, sugar. By the late 1700s, the slave population had grown past 500,000, composing 90% of the colony. The remaining 10% was made up of European slave owners and the social class affranchis (emancipated slaves and people of mixed European and African descent). This imbalance in the Saint-Domingue population coupled with the news of the French Revolution—which had resulted in the abolishment of slavery in France but not in Saint-Domingue—sparked the most successful slave revolt in history.
The revolution of 1791 was led by the freed slave Toussaint Louverture, who fought off the French and later defended against Napoleon’s 13-year attempt to reclaim the territory. Upon officially declaring independence, the land was renamed Haiti (Ayiti in Kreyòl, the official language of Haiti) in 1804. Despite this clear victory, the country’s independence was not acknowledged by the U.S. or any European country until decades later, the U.S. being one of the last to do so in 1862. This refusal has been partially attributed to the U.S. government’s hope that American slaves wouldn’t learn of Haiti’s success and be inspired to launch their own rebellion. Recognized or not, Haiti was free, and they acted as such for the next 21 years until 1825, when—without warning—they were faced with French warships on their coast.
The French demanded returns for its loss of Haiti’s income and labor. In negotiations with the acting ruler Henri Christophe, the French asserted Haiti owed 150 million gold francs—or approximately 21 billion dollars today—a crippling debt for the developing nation. Given no choice, Haiti allocated about 80% of their national budget to the French for the next 122 years. While the debt renegotiated to 90 million in 1838, Haiti was forced to take numerous loans from other countries to keep up with the payments.
The Present Condition Of Haiti
Never having fully recovered from the debt and while major western nations preyed on the island’s natural resources, Haiti has never truly developed, leaving it as one of the poorest countries in the world, with its people often scraping by on less than two dollars a day.
Haiti has had 46 leaders since Toussaint, though the majority didn’t complete a full term in office, as most were overthrown or assassinated. The last president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in 2021 after mass protests over accusations of corruption and his continued refusal to resign. In the past few years, Haiti’s politics have been in a chaotic state of limbo, cycling through five different interim leaders; the latest of which; Chairman Fritz Jean, was inaugurated on March 7th, 2025. In this time of uncertainty, the streets of Haiti have turned into a battlefield. Gangs leave bloodied streets in their wake as they fight over territory, resulting in thousands of casualties and severed access to vital resources, the government completely unable to respond.
While many some may use these examples of gang violence as a show that Haiti’s disorder is self-inflicted, they fail to mention that the weapons used in Haiti come from the United States. There are no factories dedicated to the production of arms or ammunition in Haiti, nor does the country have the resources necessary to build one. This violence is largely due to smuggling and the poor gun control restrictions in places like Florida, where most of the weapons going to Haiti come from. In the end the problem is only able to be reduced by both the increased focus of law enforcement on these smugglers and changes in legislation that would stop these weapons from being purchased in the first place.
In addition, due to Haiti’s location in the Caribbean, it is vulnerable to numerous natural disasters, which repeatedly tear apart homes and cities throughout the country. Haiti has faced multiple floods, droughts, hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes over the years, catastrophes that result in thousands of casualties and homeless citizens, continuing to damage the nation’s already suffering infrastructure.
It is not realistic for the average citizen—especially those supporting loved ones otherwise unable to care for themselves—to stay in Haiti under these conditions. Every day is spent not with the goal of growth, but the hope for survival. Predictably, these conditions have pushed numerous Haitians to attempt immigration, whether that be through legal means or otherwise.
The U.S. History With Haiti And Haitian Immigrants
In 1915, President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was assassinated by the people of Haiti, primarily driven by his execution of 167 revolutionaries who opposed his connections with the United States. In response to this, The U.S. Marine Corps invaded and occupied Haiti, claiming to be maintaining political and economic stability. In reality, this occupation led to mass deforestation by American companies given free reign over Haitian land and mass abuse towards Haitians, with massive swaths of forest disappearing without replanting. All together, the invasion left the country far worse than when they had come.
While this was not the first time the United States had interfered in Haitian affairs, it marked a significant increase in U.S. involvement. In the 1990s, under Bill Clinton, the U.S. launched an economic campaign that further weakened Haiti’s infrastructure. This included flooding the Haitian market with cheaply priced resources like rice, peanuts, and fish, which were products Haiti could already produce in sufficient quantities. This was done to benefit American manufacturers, primarily rice farms in Arkansas, the home state of Bill Clinton. As a result, local manufacturers struggled to compete, leading to a severe economic collapse that effects Haiti to this day.
In 2004, through threat of invasion, the United States assisted in a military coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was the first democratically elected president in Haitian history, challenging the policies he felt would negatively affect Haiti. This resulted in Aristide’s exile and handed off power to Boniface Alexandre, who served as the provisional president until the next election. Alexandre was known to advocating for excessive police force being reported on by the human rights organization amnesty international for his militaristic policy and the danger he presented to the Haitian people. This led to irreparable damage for Haiti as any positive changes made through Aristide’s Presidency were rendered obsolete as Haiti plunged back into political disarray.
The United States has been consistently against Haitian migrants, with asylum seekers collected at sea by The U.S. Coast Guard and sent to Guantánamo Bay since 1991. I talked to Ninaj Raul, prominent Haitian activist and cofounder of Haitian Women For Haitian Refugees (HWHR), an organization based in Flatbush, Brooklyn, that aims to support Haitian refugees trying to start a life in the United States. As a translator, Ninaj was sent to Guantánamo Bay multiple times in the 1990s, working for NBC, volunteering with lawyers and working as a family health counselor. The first time she went, in 1992, she was employed by the justice department as a language specialist, or interpreter, between immigration officers, asylum officers, and refugees. She translated for credible fear interviews to decide if refugees were in need of asylum, asking them what dangers they would face if they were to return to their country. While at Guantánamo she met Lily Cerat, the other cofounder of HWHR, and it was these experiences that inspired them to work together and start the organization.
Since the founding of HWHR, they’ve worked to support Haitian refugees in their journey to the United States. In her own words, “We provide them with information to help them start their lives in The United States by connecting them to social services. Most people come in here looking for immigration legal referrals. So we connect them to lawyers so that they can hopefully get some representation, or at least a free consultation. These are all pro bono lawyers to see if they qualify for them to adjust their status or sustain status. Most people that come in here have some kind of status even though it’s temporary, they were permitted entrance by the government.”
This has been a constant struggle throughout the organization’s existence, with crisis after crisis increasing the difficulty to provide safety for people in need of refuge. Ninaj cites key points such as the wave of immigrants at the Mexican border in 2016 after Brazil started removing Haitians, “People had initially gone to Brazil in a humanitarian visa program after the 2010 earthquake which started in, it was like a massive push for Haitians to use their labor. But then Brazil was having their own economic and political downturn, their own internal issues, and they didn’t meet these thousands of Haitians anymore. So they just decided to push them out.” As this influx at the border reached its pinnacle, Donald Trump would use the situation as a base for his 2016 presidential campaign. “We need to build a wall!” he said during campaign rallies, promoting fear of all immigrants and driving many of his first administration’s policies.
Effects Of Trump’s Policies
Trump is not the only president who prioritized deportation to combat surging immigration. Obama, Bush, and Clinton each deported millions of immigrants during their presidencies. While Trump rode on the idea that the Biden administration had been letting everybody who came to the border in stating in his debate with Biden that, “He decided to open up our border, open up our country,” the reality is that Biden repeatedly discouraged immigrants and put little work into ensuring their safety, with the positive policies he did implement being repeatedly brought up by Trump to support his claims that Biden was for immigrants. The difference between the two comes in the way Trump draws attention to his policies: he has made deportation a public spectacle in a way most presidents choose not to. Trump does this because of how much his campaign relied on his claims that immigrants are criminals and his promise that he would remove them.
All of this being said, Trump had a noticeable impact on immigrants during his first term as president. HWHR had been working with immigrants for a while at this point but this was a turning point. “I started seeing people coming in with electronic monitors on their ankles. And that was shocking to me because I heard of this in prior years from certain Central American populations. And suddenly, everyone walking into our office where except for, like, pregnant women and children, were wearing these electronic monitors. And that was very problematic in so many ways, I think medically, both physically, and mentally. Just having to be it’s it’s like a you have to plug it in to charge it, you know, like a cell phone,” Ninaj recalled, in discussing the changes she saw for the immigrants with whom HWHR worked. The Trump administration aimed to characterize immigrants as violent criminals who need to be watched and often imprisoned. This is used to enforce the idea that the goal is to fight illegal immigration and treating these people as if they’re felons makes it easier to push that narrative. The reality is that the policies that have been put in place so far have affected legal immigrants that entered with humanitarian parole as well.
Temporary protected status, or TPS, is a designation given to immigrants from a country deemed unsafe to return to. Right now immigrants from Haiti, Ukraine, Ethiopia, and more have received this TPS. This is a legal means of immigration that many need in order to escape wars, oppression, environmental disasters, and other dangerous extreme conditions in their home countries. Trump opposed this in his first term, but was held back by numerous lawsuits, since his 2025 inauguration, Trump has moved to terminate TPS for Venezuelans and shorten it for Haitians. This clearly shows that Trump is not against illegal immigration: he is against immigrants as a whole, as shortening TPS endangers those fleeing dangerous situations while taking all necessary legal precautions.
In response to this, organizations such as HWHR have advocated for TPS holders to Congress, hoping to get the policy shut down. “We did a lot of advocacy going back and forth to Washington, and having people that were directly impacted with TPS share their stories with legislators, such as congresspeople and senators, so that they can better understand and support protecting TPS. So we’ve been there before under the first Trump administration, and we’re building on that same power and using that same sort of map and plan to resist deportation. Now, there are three lawsuits that have been filed for the wrongful termination of TPS. One was filed Friday on behalf of Haitian TPS holders in Brooklyn by the same lawyers that did it back in 2017. The same lawyers that did the California one filed in San Francisco a few weeks ago on behalf of Venezuelan TPS holders,” Ninaj told me, in speaking about the effort they have gone through trying to maintain TPS.
While the end date for Haitian TPS has been set to August 3rd, 2025, the fight is never over. It is highly unlikely that when August comes the problems these people have fled from will disappear. The push against Haitians has done nothing but add to the list of ways the United States has interfered with a population of innocent people for political gain. It raises the question: When will Haitians truly be safe?
The push against Haitians has done nothing but add to the list of ways the United States has interfered with a population of innocent people for political gain. It raises the question: When will Haitians truly be safe?