President Trump’s new travel ban has sparked widespread outrage and fear in New York’s sprawling Haitian community, by far the biggest local diaspora group affected by the edict aimed at 12 nations.
Pastors, shopkeepers and community leaders worried out loud that their community would seek to stay out of sight to avoid any contact with authorities for fear of being arrested or possibly deported.
“We did nothing wrong,” said the Rev. Wesley Joseph, 55, of the Jerusalem Church of Christ in Brooklyn, a U.S. citizen who immigrated from Haiti two decades ago. “We work for America. We help America. … You have doctors, you have lawyers. We contribute to the economy.”
Waving at a sparse lunchtime crowd, Jolly Fleury, 62, said business has fallen off at his J&C Haitian Restaurant and Bakery on Clarendon Road in Brooklyn since Trump launched his latest anti-immigrant crackdown.
“Customers [are] scared. ICE hasn’t come over here yet. But some other restaurants I know, they come,” said Fleury, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. “A lot of people are worried. That’s the reason I don’t make enough money.”
Stephanie Delia, an immigration lawyer and executive director of the Little Haiti BK advocacy group, said the impending ban is hurting Haitian-owned small businesses like the small groceries along bustling Flatbush Ave. selling stacks of ripe mangoes, ginger root and cassava.
“There’s a lot of fear. There’s a lot of confusion,” Delia said.
Trump last week said citizens of Haiti and 11 other countries would be banned from even visiting the United States unless they already possess visas or permanent residency, a sharp blow to the Haitian community that numbers hundreds of thousands in the New York metro area, especially in central Brooklyn and southern Queens.
Haitian leaders and Democratic lawmakers lashed out at Trump for the move, which they said was motivated by racism and hatred of immigrants.
“This is horrific for the people of my district, many of whom have family members who are in Haiti right now,” Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-Brooklyn) told the Daily News. “They see their family living in the U.S. as a lifeline. It’s just more of the cruelty, especially when it comes to the Haitian diaspora.”
Clarke ticked off a laundry list of immediate problems that New York Haitian families and businesses would face when the ban goes into effect as soon as Monday.
“It could be Grandma coming for lifesaving medical treatment or a niece or nephew coming for a wedding or going for a funeral,” she said. “It’s all the things that we as families do. It’s unjust, and for what?”
Vania Andre, editor and publisher of The Haitian Times newspaper, said her staff is documenting huge problems in the community stemming from the ban, which comes on top of Trump’s broader crackdown on immigrants.
She said an earlier Trump order revoking Temporary Protective Status for Haitians turned the Little Haiti neighborhood in Flatbush, Brooklyn, into a “ghost town” as legal and undocumented immigrants alike lay low.
“People are not sending their kids to school, not going to places where immigrants gather or congregate,” Andre said. “They’re afraid it’s going to be: Round up first and ask questions later.”
Haiti avoided being included in a chaotic travel ban imposed during Trump’s first term. It is not on the government’s terror watch list, Clarke noted.
The White House says Haiti was included in the new ban as punishment for high rates of overstaying legal visas and and large numbers of Haitian nationals who come to the U.S. illegally.
People in Haiti face chronic poverty, political instability and gang violence, with armed men controlling at least 85% of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
The ban takes effect Monday at 12:01 a.m., a lag that may help avoid the worst of the chaos that unfolded at airports nationwide when a similar measure took effect with virtually no notice in 2017.
Haitian New Yorkers outside the Trump Building in lower Manhattan in 2018. (Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily News)Trump tied the new ban to the anti-Israel terror attack in Boulder, Colo. on June 1. He says the attack underscores the dangers posed by some visitors who overstay visas, even though the suspect in the attack is from Egypt, a country that is not on Trump’s restricted list.
Some, but not all, 12 countries were included in a similar ban in Trump’s first term. The new ban includes Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Several other countries will face new heightened restrictions including Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
Including Haiti in the travel ban is only the latest attack on the community by Trump.
In his first term, Trump derided immigrants from “s—hole countries” including Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. During the 2024 presidential campaign, he repeated false claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating neighbors’ pets.
His administration has moved to end a federal program that gave permission to temporarily live and work in the United States to 532,000 people from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The Supreme Court approved the move on May 30, clearing the way for those immigrants to potentially be deported.
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