Local faith leaders in the Haitian community are raising the alarm about a sharp increase in arrests since July 27, when the Trump administration ended the Temporary Protected Status for roughly 350,000 Haitian immigrants nationwide. Several thousand of them live and work on the Lower Shore, many working in the poultry industry. They were joined Wednesday by national civil rights leaders in prayer and protest in downtown Salisbury.
They came out of a sense of solidarity with what they called their Haitian brothers and sisters. They started out at Rebirth Inc, an immigrant community center, and marched over Route 50 to the Wicomico County Government Center, where they held a rally and prayed. Hundreds of people answering the call of local Haitian leaders like the Rev. Roosevelt Toussaint, head of the Word of Life Church in Salisbury.
“I'm crying,” Toussaint said. “I'm calling as loud as I can. I’ve explained our plight, explained our situation. I haven't heard any response from neither one of our local leaders.”
But several national civil rights leaders have answered the call. Among those in Salisbury Wednesday was the Bishop William J. Barber, a protege of the late Reverend Jesse Jackson. He and other clergy were here under the banner of the North Carolina-based Christian group, Repairers of the Breach.
Barber, on a nationwide tour, explained it like this:
“Equal protection under the law is not a temporary law. Treating folk right ought not have temporary status. Love doesn't have temporary status. The truth doesn't have temporary status.”
In Salisbury, the call has gone up on behalf of the region's large population of Haitian immigrants, refugees of a 2010 earthquake who are allowed to live and work in the U.S. while their country stabilized.
But since then, Haiti's descended into violence and chaos. Something that the Trump administration did not factor in when – with the blessing of the Supreme Court – it ended the temporary protection program and demanded that the Haitians return home. The administration is now offering cash and free flights to Haiti. Reportedly, there are a few takers.
According to Toussaint, all this has thrown the Haitian community into a state of confusion.
“Most of these people, they did not come here illegally,” he said. “They came over here under a humanitarian program.”
Fearful for their lives, many are not being caught up in the ICE immigration dragnet, even as they petition for asylum and other forms of protection.
“ICE is out there, they're trying to kidnap people,” Toussaint said. “They try to arrest them and put them in jail. Although some of them have applied for asylum, they have a five years authorization for them to work. According to ICE, that's not enough. They just pick them up.”
According to Toussaint, some 200 Haitians have been detained in the past three weeks in Wicomico County alone, including some from his church. Rumors are rife that some have already been put on planes as deportees.
ICE officials in Maryland did not respond to requests for comment. But Trump officials have argued that Temporary Protected Status was never meant to be permanent.
Advocates for the immigrant community say that the hasty expulsions still violate basic human rights and decency, if not the law.
Among them is Dr. Marie Fouché , founder and president of the Salisbury-based Safe Harbor Circles.
“There is no respect for human dignity,” she said “People are getting arrested in the middle of the streets and gas station and parking lot. They don't even have time to call a family member. Many of them had asylum pending, or valid work permits or green card applications pending.”
But for those who've been taken away, there seems little hope other than their friends and family members who have taken to the streets.
