For New York’s Haitian community, the West Indian Day Parade carries extra weight in hard times

Steel drums, flag-draped floats and the smell of jerk chicken filled Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway on Monday as hundreds of thousands gathered for the West Indian American Day Parade. For New York’s Haitian community, however, the celebration carried a heavier meaning this year.

Haitians marched amid intensified federal immigration enforcement against Caribbean and other Black immigrant communities. They also faced the loss of temporary protected status, or TPS, which had allowed hundreds of thousands of Haitians to remain legally in the United States.

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There’s a somber cloud over it with everything that has happened from last year to this year with TPS ... what’s happening in detention centers, and those who are being sent back with no valid way of living or supporting themselves.

“There’s a somber cloud over it with everything that has happened from last year to this year with TPS ... what’s happening in detention centers, and those who are being sent back with no valid way of living or supporting themselves,” said Natalie Lafontant, who organizes Lespri Ayiti, or “Spirit of Haiti,” the largest Haitian masquerade, or “mas,” community in Monday’s parade.

But Lafontant said hardship had not silenced the community. “But if you know anything about the Caribbean, especially about Haiti, we use music, dance, art to continue to strive and push through,” she said while checking parade costumes at a community center.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that federal courts could not review the Trump administration’s decision to end TPS for Haitian and Syrian immigrants. A federal judge finalized the order in early August, while work permits linked to Haitian TPS expired July 27. The decision cleared the way for roughly 350,000 Haitians to lose the protection.

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But if you know anything about the Caribbean, especially about Haiti, we use music, dance, art to continue to strive and push through.

Lafontant’s group, made up of about 180 artists, designers, musicians and residents, was taking part for a second year. It struggled to find sponsors for its float, but continued despite the cost of insurance, costumes and other arrangements. “But we continue to do it because we love our country,” Lafontant said.

The New York metropolitan area has roughly 163,000 Haitian residents, the second-largest Haitian population in the United States after Miami. Many settled in Brooklyn neighborhoods such as Flatbush, East Flatbush and Crown Heights. Haitian migration to New York began in waves under the dictatorship of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier and continued after his 1986 ouster.

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But we continue to do it because we love our country.