From the dining room of a two-bedroom apartment in East Orange, Marie* listens to a sermon on the radio in Haitian Creole, her native language. She reaches across the checkered tablecloth, grabs her phone, and glances at the screen. It’s 7 p.m. She places the phone back on the table and, with an awkward movement, stands up. It’s time for her to head to her job at a fast-food restaurant where she’s worked as a cook since arriving in the United States in 2021. Despite the challenges of her job, she is content with it as it allows her to support her family back in Haiti. Yet with the election of Donald Trump, she worries that she will soon lose this life she was only just starting to feel comfortable in. “He’s not going to do it,” she tells me when I ask her if she thinks Trump will actually deport Haitians en masse. Something in her voice suggests she is only trying to convince herself, that deep down she knows Trump is serious, and that terrifies her.
Mass deportations were one of Trump’s central promises during his 2024 election campaign. He repeatedly promised to carry out the “largest deportation program” in U.S. history. Now that he’s set to occupy the White House after a landslide election victory in November, migrants are anxiously preparing for what a Trump presidency could mean for them. Specifically, Trump has promised to end programs like humanitarian parole and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti, which have allowed thousands of Haitian migrants to enter the United States legally in the past decade. With the backdrop of these promises, Trump’s election has caused anxiety levels to rise within the Haitian community. Many are fleeing cities where they believe they might be more vulnerable to unfair targeting by immigration enforcement. Such is the case Springfield, Ohio, a city that found itself in the Republican Party’s spotlight in the final weeks of the campaign and where Trump has promised to launch his deportation agenda. Many have left for cities like Boston and New Jersey while others have opted for international destinations like Brazil and Canada.
These anxieties were on full display on Nelson’s* family group chat on the day following Trump’s election.
“I really thought Kamala was going to make history today,” read the first message sent on the morning of November 5 by Rose*.
“I never believed that would happen. No chance! I always assumed that Trump would win. How is everyone doing?” says Mike*.
“I want to reassure everyone: Trump does not have the authority to deport anyone. That is a matter for the judiciary. A president can cancel a program, but for someone who is already in the United States, only judges can decide their case. As I said, I supported Trump against the wars in the world and against the LGBTQ folks who wanted to introduce their ideology into the education of kids. No need to panic!” responds Jean*.
Jean is a lawyer educated in Haiti, I am told by Nelson. As suggested by his messages on the group chat, he is a devout Trump supporter. There is a back and forth on the group chat with other people pointing out that Trump is “crazy”, and that he has more authority now since he has both the senate and the Supreme Court on his side. To this, Jean doubles down:
“I understand that he has Congress on his side, which is why he has the power to pass any executive order to cancel the Biden program (that is how the Humanitarian Parole program is called in the Haitian community) … But only a judge can decide if someone who is in the country is not allowed to stay. Try to understand the system and don’t panic! After all, it’s their country. It’s up to us to solve our problems at home.”
This exchange is emblematic of the concerns that are animating the Haitian community in the United States as Trump’s inauguration approaches. There is no doubt that Trump’s administration will be hard on migration. But how exactly? And what does that mean for the Haitian community?
So far, it is widely expected that Trump will sign an executive order ending the Humanitarian Parole program for Haiti. The parole program was launched by the Biden administration to curb the flow of irregular migration to the United States. It was intended to deter migrants from crossing illegally into the United States by providing a legal pathway for eligible individuals. Venezuela was the first country designated for the program in October 2022. Haiti was then designated in January 2023, alongside Cuba and Nicaragua. As of August 2024, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that nearly 530,000 people from the four designated countries “arrived lawfully and were granted parole.” Haitians were the largest nationality in this group, accounting for 210,000 of the arrivals, followed by Venezuelans with 117,000 arrivals.
Back in October, however, the Biden administration announced that it would not extend the program. According to Michael Wilner, the Chief Washington Correspondent at McClatchy, this decision was a strategic one. Wilner believes that, anticipating a potential Trump election win, the Biden administration wanted to give “eligible individuals who fall within these groups… time to look at alternative paths to legal status.”
Now that Trump has been elected, the end of the humanitarian parole program is imminent.
“100%, humanitarian is gonna go!”, said Remy, a beneficiary of the parole program who arrived in the United States at the end of last year with his family. “However, TPS is another thing,” he adds.
While the fate of parole is all but certain, the future of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is harder to determine. Haiti was designated for TPS in 2010 following the devastating earthquake that claimed the lives of more than 300,000 people. Since then, Haiti has been redesignated numerous times with the most recent designation being an 18-month extension on June 28, 2024. With this redesignation, Haitians who entered the United States under parole could apply for Temporary Protected Status. The program’s extension also meant that TPS recipients would be protected from deportation and allowed to work in the United States until at least February 2026. As of March 31, 2024, nearly 200,000 Haitians have been approved for TPS according to the National Immigration Forum. Does Trump’s election risk changing anything? Yes and no.
In 2017, during his first presidency, Trump ended TPS for 59,000 Haitians, a decision that sparked a six-year legal battle in a case known as the Ramos v. Mayorkas case. In 2018, the plaintiffs obtained a preliminary injunction, which automatically extended the legal status of TPS holders for five years until Biden redesignated or extended the program for the affected countries in 2023.
However, as the case was progressing through court, thousands of Haitians flocked to the northern border to seek asylum in Canada. In fact, asylum claims in Canada reached their highest level in decades in 2017 with Haitians accounting “for almost a third (32%) of Canada’s overall increase in referred asylum claims” that year. Seven years later, many suspect that history could repeat itself. Canadian officials are already preparing for an influx of Haitian migrants. But things are very different in Canada. Since 2017, Canada has adopted a number of restrictive immigration measures to deal with the growing disenchantment with the government’s migration policies.
Craig Damian Smith, a political scientist and researcher at York University, has observed the change in Canada’s attitude toward migration in the last decade.
“Canadian public perception is really turning against asylum. It was never a big deal in Canada until 2017. It was not what they call a “ballot box issue”. Public polling said that people did not vote on immigration issues. You couldn’t win elections on it. But now, [things are different].”
The scenario with Haitians back in 2017 has not only affected public perception, it has also led to important policy changes including the extension of the Safe Third Country Agreement.
[talk about the Safe Third Country Agreement and how it got extended]
Craig Damian Smith:
“People started coming. It was Haitians first, and then word got out about this crossing rocks and road and how easy it was. Once word was out, it became a draw for people from around the world and people from the US.”
“Do you think the expansion of the STCA agreement was motivated by what happened in 2017, with the Haitians?” I asked.
“100%! It was 100% based on that!” he responded almost immediately. “Basically this extension of the STCA was just in case of another Trump presidency.”
Stephanie Delia, a Haitian immigration lawyer, feels that uncertainty. Like everyone else, she doesn’t know what Trump is going to do. The best she can do is guess.
“My guess is that he will not end TPS, but instead let it expire”, she says. “Immigration advocates will hopefully file lawsuits and tie [his decision] up in the courts long enough for him to give up on it or for his term to end.”
At the same time, she does not completely discard the possibility that he might go after TPS.
“If he attempts to end TPS before the end of the designation period,” she adds “then I do think he’ll be more successful [than im 2017], unless Congress or the Supreme Court act, which I don’t expect”.
For Nelson, however, there is no doubt that TPS will be included in Trump’s sweep, as well as humanitarian parole. Nelson filed a petition a at the end of last year to have a family member come to the United States under humanitarian parole program. The case is still pending. With each passing day, the chances of the petition being approved before Trump’s inauguration are diminishing. Nelson also believes that Trump will be more successful this time around, not if but when he goes after Temporary Protected Status.
“The American public is already crippled with socio-economic issues such as the [rising] cost of living, the housing crisis, food access, unemployment, and reproductive rights… I don’t foresee much opposition to his fight against “illegal immigrants.”
In a sea of despair, the migrants who are likely to be affected by these policies are holding on to hope. For some, in the face of so much uncertainty, they ground their hope in their faith in God.
“I believe that I will continue to live in the US with my family even after the D T presidency. That’s my faith in God. My other option is to go to Canada if it is possible in case that i have to leave. Otherwise I have no choice but to go back to my country.”
Now fully dressed and ready to go work, Marie stands by the door and looks into emptiness l’air penseur. A few seconds later, she exhales a deep sigh and without looking at me utters these words:
“We are waiting on God. He is the one who put us here. We trust in him!”
She leaves for work, her phone in hand, the Haitian pastor’s voice slowly fading in the background.
Author: Gil Joseph (Page 1 of 2)
Jennifer Senior’s piece for The Atlantic strongly resonated with me. Perhaps it is the fact that I crossed Bobby’s path through Princeton. Or perhaps it is his sensibility that reminded me of people I am close to. Or myself. Senior did an amazing job following the thread of the story and reconstructing the narrative, two decades after they happened. The structure of the article was seamless without being obvious. It seemed to follow the structure of memories and how they come back to us. That is especially true of traumatic events, which is what this piece is following: the life and afterlife of trauma. Senior brings the different pieces of the puzzle together skillfully and allows herself to follow the story where it takes her. What started as an exploration of grief over time ended up touching on important themes such as the workings of conspiratorial thinking, family dynamics, survivors’ guilt and most surprisingly, how memory is reconstructed. The diary is so central to the article. The characters and their motivations come to life around this peculiar item which stands for Bobby, the non-presence at the heart of the piece. Everyone and everything is framed around that treasure, what it tells us and what it leaves as a secret. I also wanted to point out the photos and their contribution to the strength of the narrative. We are not only discovering the characters we are reading about but also diving into archives, such as Bobby’s last diary entry or his wallet. All of these elements build a repository of what is left behind after someone is lost and how those who stay behind attempt to recover or create meaning out of what remains. This is all captured through the quote “Life loves on” which is a creation – though not a fiction – built by those who stayed behind from remnants of what once was.
The theme of grief is also present in Nadja Drost’s “When can we really rest?” which makes an account of migrants going through the Darién Gap. Compared to Dickerson’s “Seventy Miles in Hell”, Drost maintains this narration of horror, death and danger which by all accounts are part of the Darién’s reality. However, I really appreciated the humanization of every character in that story, including the smugglers – a term that was used interchangeably with guides – the drug traffickers and the refugees themselves. Drost’s account is comparatively a more neutral description of the scenes in the region that brings together the diversity of people that makes up the landscape – drug traffickers, the indigenous community, guides and migrants themselves.
A common thread with Senior’s piece is the theme of grief. Speaking of the father whose 9-year old daughter got carried away by a river and his response to this traumatic event, Drost writes: “ How would having his daughter’s remains help his family? He tried to explain what might appear to some as heartless: For his family’s sake, he had to find a way to outlast what had happened. Mourning had no place on this journey.”
As Senior puts it, grief is “idiosyncratic, anarchic, polychrome.” These two texts show two versions of grief, both valuable and meaningful, and intimately different.
From the dining room of a two-bedroom apartment in East Orange, Marie listens to a sermon on the radio as she waits to leave for her night shift. She reaches across the checkered tablecloth, grabs her phone, and glances at the screen. It’s 7 p.m. She places the phone back on the table and, with an awkward movement, stands up. She is about to turn 48, but she still feels like she has energy to keep working. Nonetheless, the heat and the smoke from the fryer at the fast-food restaurant where she has been working have taken their toll on her. She came to the US in 2021 and was approved for Temporary Protected Status after the program was extended in May of that year. Three years later, Marie remains determined to make the most of her health while she still has it, and for as long as she is in this country. Now, more than ever, she feels the uncertainty weighing on her. “He is not going to do it,” she says, trying to convince herself that Trump has been lying about his mass deportation plan. But deep down, she knows Trump is serious, and that terrifies her.
Mass deportations were a central promise of Trump’s 2024 election bid. He vowed to carry out the “largest deportation program” in U.S. history. Now that he’s set to occupy the White House after a landslide election victory in November, migrants are apprehensively preparing for what a Trump presidency could mean for them. Specifically, Trump has promised to end programs like humanitarian parole and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti, which have allowed thousands of Haitian migrants to enter the United States legally since 2021. Haitians like Marie aren’t just waiting patiently for Trump to begin deportations; they are being proactive and carefully planning their steps between now and January, when Trump takes office. While some are considering a change of status, others are contemplating leaving the United States altogether. Where to? Canada.
In 2017, when Trump first ended Temporary Protection for Haitians, thousands of Haitians flocked to the northern border to seek asylum in Canada. In fact, asylum claims in Canada reached their highest level in decades that year. Seven years later, many suspect that history could repeat itself. Canadian officials are already preparing for an influx of Haitian migrants. But things are very different in Canada today, and perhaps 2014 is not the new 2017.
In “The Real Choice on Immigration,” Julia Preston brilliantly contrasts the vision of U.S. migration governance that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris presented during their respective campaigns. She points out that Trump’s approach relies on provocative language and policies that resonate widely with the public, without any sensitivity to what is moral or feasible. In fact, while Trump has been roundly criticized for his talk about immigrants—including by members of the conservative party—many people believe that his approach is effective in reducing the number of immigrants at the southern border, even if it offends the social conscience. One of Preston’s main arguments is that this perception is wrong. She argues that Trump has wasted resources on temporary solutions—such as strict enforcement at the border and in communities or on building up the border—rather than on long-term solutions. For Preston, Harris’s approach is more grounded in practical solutions that address concerns about the porous southern border, realize America’s humanitarian aspirations, and recognize the economic necessity of migrants. She writes that Harris “is proposing practical reforms to fortify the border and overhaul the immigration process in line with the nation’s labor needs and humanitarian aspirations” while “Trump proposes an exclusionist project that would not only bring turmoil and hardship to communities across the country but would also do long-term damage to the U.S. economy and undermine the United States’ global reputation”.
This article was published in the run-up to the US elections in late October, which explains why the author wrote it as a “choice” between two opposing visions of US immigration policy and ultimately presented Harris’s as the most desirable for the United States. However, I believe that outside of an electoral context, there is actually a false dichotomy between the approaches proposed by the two parties. I think it’s worth acknowledging that both the Democratic and Republican parties have shifted to the right in terms of their positions on immigration policy. This explains why Biden’s recent moves are in line with what conservative members of Congress would have supported had Trump not insisted on torpedoing any initiative that appears to address the border. It also explains why Biden and Harris supported the bill even though it does not include provisions for a more durable solution and fixes to the country’s asylum system. Preston herself writes that “in its current form, the bill is heavy on Republican enforcement priorities and does not address Democrats’ most long-standing reform demands, particularly for pathways to citizenship for Dreamers, farm workers, and spouses of American citizens”. Rather than a “tactical” and strategic campaign decision by Harris, I believe that the positions on this bill are an indicator of the future of American policy in terms of migration governance, which means a shift towards more restrictive policies, regardless of the political affiliations of the proponents. Understanding this broader structural implication is important because it allows us to move away from individual platforms to understand the changing trends in US foreign affairs and domestic politics. In other words, Harris was not going to save us either.
A factory in the middle of New Jersey was one of the last places Billy would have expected to hear his country’s national anthem. Yet there he was, standing proudly as the rhythms of La Dessaliniène blared over the speakers. He looked around at the room filled with some of his colleagues—a fine subset of Trane Technologies’ multinational workforce in Trenton. There were about a hundred of them, standing solemnly and waving their miniature Haitian flags as the night drew to a close. Billy had a smile on his face!
“It was really nice to see people from different backgrounds come together to celebrate Haitian Flag Day with us,” Billy said with a look of satisfaction. It was the first celebration of its kind at the company, and it all happened because of him—Bill Lorcy, nicknamed Billy.
Billy, 46, has been working at Trane Technologies since 2016. It was the first company to hire him after his Temporary Protected Status (TPS) application was approved. Billy moved permanently to Philadelphia in December 2015 after four years of traveling back and forth between the United States and Haiti on a tourist visa. In 2012, young Billy, an eloquent communications major at the State University of Haiti, the country’s most prestigious institution of higher learning, was selected to join a delegation that represented the university at a conference in Queens, New York. He returned every summer after that. As his five-year visa neared its expiration date, Billy faced a difficult decision. Although he personally wanted to complete his studies before considering leaving Haiti, those around him increasingly insisted that he stay in the United States. For good.
“Everyone told me the same thing: ‘With the direction Haiti is going, there is no reason for you to come back. Stay.’ I decided not to be stubborn, and I stayed,” Billy said.
Like many immigrants, Billy had to move past the painful realization that the United States was nothing like what had been portrayed to him in the media or even what he had experienced as a tourist.
“We are presented with an image of life in the United States as luxurious. However, there is nothing luxurious about daily life. You have to work, take care of your family, and pay the bills,” Billy said. Despite the challenges, he is proud of what he has accomplished since moving to Philadelphia. He has been able to take care of himself, of his family, and support those he left behind in Haiti. “I can’t complain, as they say here,” he concluded, after briefly reflecting on his overall experience in the United States.
He still misses his country dearly. He often evokes memories of his youth—the laughter and friendship associated with the first four decades of his life in Haiti.
(Bottom left, Billy during his time in Queens, NY, 2012)
Billy was born in Carrefour, a commune south of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area with a population of about half a million. However, he spent much of his time in the city center, where most of the educational and service opportunities he sought were located. He was very involved in the Scout Movement and his church, two institutions that played a vital role in his formation.
“I like to make myself available to help others. As a Christian, you should always be there to help others because God says to love your neighbor as yourself,” Billy said, noting how his religious beliefs shaped his personality and continue to inform his life decisions.
Billy speaks with conviction about his faith; it is a core part of who he is. His religious faith led him to the Haitian Red Cross in 1998, where he served as a volunteer for over a decade before joining Oxfam Quebec in 2010. Through his volunteer work, Billy visited all 10 departments of Haiti, which remains his favorite icebreaker fun fact to this day.
It was also through his faith that Billy met his wife, Rebecca, who is perhaps the real reason he stayed in the United States. They connected on Facebook around 2014 at the recommendation of a mutual friend from church. At that time, Rebecca was already living in the United States.
Although they didn’t realize it until much later, Billy and Rebecca had already crossed paths several times at Christian youth activities and summer camps in Port-au-Prince. Billy was even Rebecca’s camp instructor at some point. They stayed in touch throughout Billy’s travels. He tried to meet up with her every time he came to the United States. When he was in Haiti, they spoke via WhatsApp and Facebook, although network issues often made communication difficult.
“Courting her was no easy task, but by God’s grace, we did it,” Billy said with a smile on the corner of his mouth. Rebecca confirmed his side of the story. “I always told Billy that I didn’t believe he was the one God had planned for me, but Billy always promised he would wait for me. And he did.” Rebecca speaks about Billy with passion, her voice radiating confidence as she shares the things she appreciates about their relationship. It’s hard to imagine a time when she did not believe she had a future with him.
“We’re imperfect,” Rebecca says, “but we understand each other in our imperfections. We’re both playful people who never get tired of each other. Some people find it strange, but we never run out of things to say to each other!” Rebecca and Billy have two children together—two boys—one is 8 and the other, 3. Billy also has a 16-year-old child in Haiti from a previous relationship.
When Billy is not at home or church, he is at work. Earlier this year, he hosted a Haitian Flag Day celebration at his company, which was met with praise from everyone, from coworkers to executives. The food, music, and ambiance brought him home for a brief but special moment. The countless logistical challenges he had to overcome were suddenly all worth it.
“It was a beautiful celebration of Haitian heritage,” Billy said.
New exodus looms for Haitian migrants in the United States
During his campaign, Donald Trump promised he would enact a mass deportation scheme – the largest in American history. He vowed that he would start with Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio. Last month, the Biden administration decided not to extend the humanitarian parole for migrants from Haiti (among other nationalities) who had already been admitted to the country through the parole program. Michael Wilner, a correspondent for McClatchy, suggested that this decision was made to give eligible Haitians to find other avenues to remain in the United States, notably Temporary Protected Status (TPS). In fact, with a Trump presidency, it is almost certain that the program will be completely halted, so looking for alternatives makes sense. However, in an interview with NewsNation back in early October, Trump said he would revoke TPS for Haitians and “bring them back to their country”. It would not be the first time Trump tried to revoke TPS. During his first term, Trump had announced the end of TPS, a decision that was ultimately blocked by a judge in New York. Would things be different this time?
Today, over 300,000 Haitians are TPS beneficiaries. Around 200,000 are beneficiaries of the humanitarian parole program. With both programs expected to be suspended by the Trump administration, over half a million Haitians could be in a legal limbo.
In my final project, I would like to investigate how the Haitian community and its allies are preparing for an end to these programs. I intend to interview Haitian families, beneficiaries of both TPS and humanitarian parole, sponsors of the beneficiaries, people in Haiti who are waiting for their cases to be processed and sponsors who are waiting for their families to come over.
I am also interested in how Canada is preparing for a mass Haitian exodus as happened when TPS first ended in 2017. Can we expect the same to happen this time around? I will try to talk to Haitians who moved to Canada during this period to understand how everything happened and what their experience has been like since.
I will also interview immigration lawyers, leaders of nonprofit and advocacy organizations connected to the Haitian community as well as government officials in Canada to see how they are preparing for a potential haitian migration.
Contacts
Ira Kurzban, the Miami immigration attorney who was among the lawyers who successfully argued the class-action lawsuit against the end of TPS back in 2017.
Marleine Bastien from Family Action Movement Network
Gene Hamilton – immigration lawyer supporting the end of TPS for Haitians
Colleen Desiree, Association of Haitian Women in Boston
Mireille Paquet, Associate Professor, Political Science mireille.paquet@concordia.ca
Marjorie Villefranche (director of Maison d’Haiti, a Haitian community organization in Montreal)
Haitian workers at Princeton, other connections who have TPS and connections in Canada.
Links
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-vows-mass-deportation-migrants-springfield-dismisses-threats/story?id=113661663
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/03/politics/trump-revoke-status-ohio-haitian-migrants/index.html
https://thehill.com/latino/4745949-biden-immigration-tps-haiti-mayorkas/
https://www.boundless.com/blog/biden-administration-ends-temporary-stay-program-thousands-of-migrants-from-four-countries/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/08/canada-migrants-trump-mass-deportation-plan
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/world/americas/a-surge-of-migrants-crossing-into-quebec-tests-canadas-welcome.html
Frank Langfitt’s article illustrates very well the value of flexibility in journalism: he started out wanting to write a story about Chinese Communist Party dissidents, and ended up uncovering an internationally renowned con man in the process. I was particularly struck by the approach the reporters took to changing course when their suspicions about the stories they were being told began to surface. The turning point was the email Gao allegedly received from the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service. I was impressed by the authors’ clear-sightedness in recognizing that something was wrong, and their insight into undertaking their own research to verify the stories they were being fed, especially given how much the story had already been picked up by other outlets without being verified. I appreciate similar illustrations of the role that journalists can play in seeking the truth and not simply reporting what has been said. The authors of this article used their critical thinking and pursued their vocation of objectivity and integrity to investigate, ultimately producing a story that might have gone against their subjective interests, namely, to scrutinize the Chinese government.
This anecdote about how the media picked up the story of the bomb threats when they had not been verified echoes what we read last week when we talked about the value of open source investigations. Time and time again, we have seen how the media can fall victim to its own biases. In our collective consciousness on this side of the world, China is constructed as a country controlled by a very complex, deeply organized, and deeply intrusive state that orchestrates complex operations to suppress dissidents and target the United States. While some of the events that underlie this characterization may have merit, if this is the assumption with which we approach stories as journalists, errors like the one above can easily proliferate. We seek out stories that confirm our biases and are not motivated to investigate further stories that seem to confirm our preconceptions. Repeated over and over again, this lack of rigor can be counterproductive because it erodes trust in the journalism profession as a whole and we run the risk of falling into a post-truth society where we no longer know who to trust. Biases are humane, thus why it is important to design a rigorous system that allows us to maintain objectivity regardless of the subject matter.
I believe this distance is necessary for effective journalism. It is one of the greatest benefits of embedded journalism, because it gives a journalist the time and space to follow a story long enough to identify potential inconsistencies and investigate them thoroughly. This creates a lag that helps create a helpful contrast with the fast-paced environment of traditional journalism, which ends up being more vulnerable to misinformation and manipulation due to the expectations placed on journalists to cover the news quickly and to shock.
Finally, I enjoyed reading Goudeau’s article because she showed us the role of public perception and opinion in shaping the political landscape of refugee resettlement in the United States. The power of public relations campaigns cannot be underestimated, as it defines which groups receive assistance and which have a hard time making their demands heard.
In the Bellingcat documentary, I was particularly struck by Professor Jay Rosen’s distinction between how credibility is established between traditional journalism and open source investigative journalism. He says that while traditional journalism can rely on the credibility established by the institutions that platform it, open source journalism has no choice but to rely on transparency. Thus, the resources used to generate journalistic accounts of events such as war crimes need to be made available and need to be directly verifiable by the public. In addition to making these sources accessible, open source journalists also guide the public through the process of analyzing the data and verifying its authenticity. This got me thinking about how traditional journalism could benefit from adopting a similar approach based on transparency and reproducibility, as academia has. This could avoid problems like the controversy we briefly discussed in class about Judith Miller’s dismissal from The New York Times.
I was also surprised to see how fabricated data could be picked up by international media without any effort to verify it. These examples clearly demonstrate that the media has its flaws and that its biases can affect the quality of the reporting it does. At a time when trust in the media is on the decline, what would it mean for traditional journalism to include sources in its reporting that help the public verify the claims being made rather than just expecting its readers to trust it? Does journalism lose something when transparency becomes a much more important part of its work than trust? In asking these questions, I could not help but think of cases where otherwise perfectly credible sources demand anonymity. What does transparency mean when confidentiality is such an important part of journalists’ work?
I was fascinated by the creativity of investigative journalists and how they use gaming and geolocation technologies to challenge official government statements. This kind of work by ordinary citizens is inspiring and illustrates an optimistic application of technology to democratize access to crucial information. The documentary complements the Times and Forbes article very well. On the one hand, “social media, smartphones and near real-time monitoring of attacks could usher in a new era of accountability”. On the other, it is legitimate to be wary of accounts that are not produced by people trained and accredited to provide us with information. It is legitimate to be wary of people like Elliott Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, because the reality is that he is not an expert. The promise of technology and open-source investigation must be balanced with caution. Ultimately, we cannot all become investigators. We cannot, and in my view should not, expect trust to disappear. Trust is a fundamental part of the social contract, and without it we cannot live in community. So in my view, it is much more important to revise the norms of the institutions from which we expect the truth, to invest in accountability mechanisms, and to further decentralize power so that institutions are able to hold each other to account. That is much more productive than an environment where everything is questioned.
I am excited about the possibilities that open source investigations will offer, particularly in terms of holding powerful individuals, institutions, and states to account. I am equally excited about working to restore trust in our institutions.
Caitlin Dickerson’s article in The Atlantic offers a poignant account of the journey that thousands of migrants have undertaken over the years for a chance to reach the American El Dorado. These horrific and painful experiences not only speak to the desperation that drove these refugees to leave their homelands, but they also highlight the courage and dedication of people fleeing persecution, violence, and extreme poverty in their countries. I was reminded me of a conference I attended last year on the experiences of migrants traveling through Central America. We heard from an anthropologist who had joined a group of migrants through the Darién Gap to try to understand the significance of what they brought with them and what they left behind. The researcher explained that, although she was with the migrants on this journey, she was constantly aware of her distance and, frankly, her privilege. The mere access to a U.S. passport set her apart from the racialized and politically vulnerable group she found themselves with, even though they had embarked on the same journey.
Reading Dickerson’s article, I couldn’t help but think about the ethical considerations of reporting such experiences as a journalist for whom non-intervention is a core principle. Being a spectator to such violence while being aware of one’s own privilege can raise important ethical considerations. Then comes the process of publishing reports, speaking at conferences as a paid expert on the suffering of others, or trying to make sense of it, in the case of academics. Indeed, these considerations are not unique to journalists. Yet I believe these questions are extremely important to grapple with for people interested in telling refugee stories, which can be incredibly violent, intimate, traumatic, and incredibly personal. At the same time, these stories play an important role in our political discourse. They give a name and a face to the people we talk about and make policies about, forcing us to confront the reality of their humanity. Overall, have these stories made us more empathetic to the suffering of others, or have they simply fueled our perverse desire to uncover stories that move us? These are difficult questions to answer, but they are important because when we engage with them critically, we become better researchers, better journalists, and better storytellers.
I really enjoyed discovering the tension between deterrence and more conciliatory approaches to migration governance in Aikins’s description of Jonathan Blitzer’s book. Filkins, on the other hand, does a fantastic job of analyzing the politicization of migration governance in the United States and how it has exacerbated failures that are mainly systemic in nature. Both pieces highlight the experiences of people on both sides of the migration issue and the political spectrum, to show how tone-deaf policies designed in Washington DC policy offices affect the realities of migrants and border protection agents. Both articles complement Dickerson’s piece very well. While Dickerson highlights how these policies affect displaced migrants by putting arbitrary and dangerous barriers in the way of displaced people trying to find a better life, Filkins and Aikins delve into the intricacies of the immigration system and the many ways it fails everyone—not just migrants. These stories show us how the system has been overwhelmed and how the politicization of migration has made it even more difficult to find a truly effective solution to what is above all a logistical problem and a human rights nightmare.
While these pieces show how complex the immigration system of the United States has grown over the years, I have also found myself feeling slightly more optimistic about one day finding solutions to the so-called “migratory crises”. As illustrated in Blitzer’s book, “the American immigration system is a victim of its own dysfunction” (Aikins). If only we allow ourselves to leave behind the politics and approach this challenge as a logistical one, we can begin to alleviate the pressures on the border through policies that achieve effective resource building and allocation and create straightforward pathways for legal migration into the United States.
On Friday, October 4, the Biden administration announced that it would not extend the humanitarian parole program for citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The decision has sparked outrage among many immigrant rights advocacy groups who say it could endanger “the lives of as many as 530,000 people”. Similar programs for Ukraine and Afghanistan have been extended in the past. Why not do the same for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela?
This parole program, abbreviated as the “CHNV Parole Program” in reference to the countries it covers, allows citizens of the designated countries to seek temporary asylum in the United States. In an email, Jacqueline Charles, a journalist covering Haiti and the Caribbean for the Miami Herald, clarified that the administration had not ended the program “but decided it will not extend the two year window for those already admitted under the program.” That is an important nuance because it means people from these countries will continue to be eligible for the humanitarian parole program. Under this program, the United States has committed to admit up to 30,000 nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela every month.
Mark Green, the Republican U.S Representative for Tennessee’s 7th congressional district, told the New York Post that the federal government’s move was an “optics-driven smokescreen” by the Biden administration to appear tough on immigration just weeks before the election. The Biden administration has in fact taken a number of restrictive measures to curb the number of crossings into the United States, including an executive order that restricts asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. According to the Associated Press, these measures are a response to the administration’s low poll numbers on its handling of migration, which could be a liability for the Democratic Party in the election next month.
Michael Wilner, the Chief Washington Correspondent at McClatchy, suggested another possible explanation for this decision.
“The administration didn’t renew parole for these groups because they didn’t believe they could guarantee that a future administration would maintain the program. Renewing it would give individuals a false sense of security. By giving them advance notice that they won’t be renewing it, eligible individuals who fall within these groups have time to look at alternative paths to legal status,” Wilner said in a statement via email.
In fact, Haitians who arrived in the country before June 2024 and Venezuelans who entered the United States before July 2023 continue to be eligible for Temporary Protected Status (TPS). The TPS program allows beneficiaries to obtain work authorization, it protects them against deportation and establishes a path for them to be granted travel authorization. Cubans have a separate process that allows them to obtain permanent status. This special process, which is guaranteed by the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 (CAA), “allows Cuban natives or citizens living in the United States who meet certain eligibility requirements to apply to become lawful permanent residents”. Nicaraguans appear to be the most vulnerable group because they are not eligible for any specific program, although they can apply for asylum like all other nationalities, with no guarantee of approval.
The federal government’s decision not to renew the humanitarian parole program for the four countries comes after months of intense scrutiny from Republicans. They have repeatedly described the program as “an abuse of presidential executive authority,” according to the Miami Herald. In September, Trump announced in an interview with Fox News that his administration would not recognize the legal status of people admitted under the humanitarian parole program, putting them at risk of deportation. Earlier this year, about 20 Republican-led states sued the Biden administration over the parole program, though a federal judge ultimately upheld it in March.
Dr. Johnny Laforet, a Haitian lecturer at Princeton University, believes that the program, despite its imperfections, has achieved positive results from the government’s point of view.
“The government wanted to stem the flow of migrants coming into the southern border”, said Laforet. “If you compare the number of border crossings before and after the program was established, you will clearly see the difference”. Back in May, FWD.us (pronounced Forward US), an immigration and criminal justice reform advocacy organization, published a report that showed that the CHNV humanitarian parole program had successfully reduced “unauthorized migration to the border”. Department of Homeland Security officials confirmed to the Washington Post that “illegal crossings from those four countries [had] fallen 99 percent since the program began in 2022 for Venezuelans and 2023 for the other nationals”.
The humanitarian parole program was launched in October 2022 to provide a legal pathway for Venezuelan migrants trying to flee their country. It was extended in January 2023 to include nationals of Haiti, Nicaragua, and Cuba. Since then, the program has allowed more than 500,000 migrants from those four countries to enter the United States with temporary legal status.
Speaking about the benefits of the program specifically for Haitian migrants, Dr. Laforet said that “in addition to applying for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) once they arrive in the U.S., which the administration has made available to them, this wave of newcomers can also get married or find a job that helps them get their green card.”
Overall, Dr. Laforet believes the program has done a lot for the Haitian community, including those who were already established in the United States. “[The parole program] is also good for the Haitians already living in the United States, because now their family members can join them here, and they no longer need to worry as much about their well being back in Haiti.”
