We mourn the tragic death by suicide of 20 year old Haitian Pierre Damas Bel following the Trump Administration’s termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. Pierre was forced to begin his first days of college – where he was enrolled as an honor student – shackled with an ICE ankle monitor. He was distraught about being forced to wear this humiliating and dehumanizing device. Being robbed of his legal US status threatened all that Pierre had accomplished and all that he envisioned for his future. And so a promising young life has tragically been ended.
Pierre Damas Bel is a victim of the Trump Administration’s vicious racial hatred targeting Haitians. Like Emmett Till, like Hind Rajab, sometimes one person’s story confronts us with the immediacy and impact of systemic and cruel injustice, calling on us to act. Pierre Damas Bel’s story is such a one. It compels us to take action to stop what is happening to hundreds of thousands more Haitians who were deprived of legal US status overnight and are living in fear of ICE gestapo apprehension and expulsion. This is racial targeting, this is othering, this is fascism. We can and must fight for them. We demand safety for Haitian families. Stop the deportations. Abolish ICE. Demand that the Senate pass S 4814 legislation so that Haitian TPS holders can retain their legal status through 2029.
For an update on the current situation, and further actions planned, please listen to this Thursday, September 3rd episode of KPFA Flashpoints with Dennis Bernstein speaking with Haiti Action co-founders Pierre Labossiere and Robert Roth:
