June 2026 – Immigrant Heritage Month | Caribbean American Heritage Month

June marks Immigrant Heritage Month. A time to celebrate the rich contributions of immigrants to the United States. This year, as we honor the legacies of those who have built this nation, we must also bear witness to an unprecedented assault on the very communities that make the USA vibrant.

Since July 2025, the second Trump administration has waged a targeted war on Black and Brown immigrants. Haitian Bridge Alliance has documented every blow. What emerges is a clear, terrifying pattern: detention as punishment, deportation as policy, and racism disguised as procedure.

The Summer the Protections Began to Fall

It started quietly last July, with the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Honduras and Nicaragua — affecting roughly 76,000 people. Then came the court rulings: a federal judge briefly blocked the end of Haiti’s TPS, but the message was sent. By November, TPS for Haiti and Ethiopia was officially terminated. The administration also killed the Family Reunification Parole program for seven countries — including Haiti, Honduras, and Guatemala — stripping work authorization from families who had played by the rules.

“Dangerous, premature, morally unacceptable,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance. “The same government that warns Americans not to travel to Haiti — Level 4, ‘Do Not Travel,’ with 90 percent of Port-au-Prince under gang control — says it’s safe to send people back.”

Meanwhile, the detention machine roared to life. ICE opened the Everglades Detention Facility, quickly nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” with capacity for 3,000 people. By November 2025, a record 66,000 people were locked in ICE custody. At least 30 died behind those walls last year.

December 2025 marked a rhetorical escalation that made the administration’s motives undeniable. President Trump referred to Somali immigrants as “garbage.” Almost immediately, his administration paused all pending green-card applications from 19 countries — overwhelmingly African, Caribbean, Arab, and Muslim nations. “Calling Somalis ‘garbage’ reflects a worldview that also cages Haitian children at the border, fast-tracks mass deportations, and then blames migrants for seeking refuge,” Guerline Jozef said at the time.

By the end of the year, legal immigration had been functionally frozen. USCIS, issued 196,000 Notices to Appear — turning itself into a deportation arm. More than 2,400 people were arrested inside USCIS field offices.

A Death From a Tooth Infection

The human cost became impossible to ignore in early 2026. Within the first ten days of the year, five migrants died in ICE custody. Then, on March 8, came the death of Emmanuel Damas, a Haitian national. He had complained of severe tooth pain in mid-February. He did not receive dental care. The infection spread, causing sepsis. He died in a detention cell.

“People seeking safety should not die from untreated medical conditions while in government custody,” Jozef said. Damas’s name now joins a grim list — one that advocates say grows longer when the government stops seeing immigrants as human.

On April 29, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases that could reshape the lives of 1.3 million people. Miot v. Trump (Haiti) and Dahlia Doe v. Noem (Syria) ask a simple but devastating question: Can federal courts review the administration’s decision to end TPS, or can the executive act with no oversight?

Directly at stake: 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. Indirectly, all 17 TPS countries. A ruling is expected by late June or early July. As of now, protections remain in place through July 1, 2026, per USCIS.

“We do not panic. We do not believe rumors,” Jozef told community members in May. “We stay informed through trusted sources.”

The immigrant rights movement has won fights — often against impossible odds. On February 10, 2026, HBA co-anchored the first Afro-Latinx Roundtable in the 50-year history of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. On March 30, a discharge petition forced a House vote on TPS for Haiti. And on April 16, the House passed bipartisan legislation extending TPS for Haitian immigrants for three more years — with ten Republicans joining Democrats.

Those victories did not fall from the sky. They came from families on trains, buses, and carpools who showed up at rallies, from lawyers filing amicus briefs, from voters who refused to look away.

Immigrant Heritage Month has always been about honoring the past. This year, it is also about surviving the present. Black and Brown immigrants — Haitian, Somali, Ethiopian, Syrian, Honduran, and so many others.

We are still here. We are still fighting.

Anpil men chay pa lou – Many hands lighten the load.

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