Haitian migrants find temporary home in Miami

By Marlene Quaroni - Florida Catholic

MIAMI | Kevin-Jay Metellus, 28 months, pedaled a toy car around Notre Dame d’Haiti’s courtyard as his parents searched nearby through donated boxes of clothes, food, household items and other necessities.

Marlene Belizaire, 27, and her husband, Kervens Metellus, 30, were among several families released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection who arrived in Miami around midnight Sunday, accompanied on the flight by two Miami priests: Notre Dame d’Haiti’s pastor, Father Reginald Jean-Mary, and Holy Family’s pastor, Father Fritzner Bellonce.

The priests had traveled to Del Rio, Texas, on Friday after receiving a Homeland Security pass to help the 30,000 or so Haitian migrants who had massed there over the past two weeks, seeking asylum in the United States.

Father Jean-Mary, Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski and Catholic Legal Services thought it would help the migrants to receive a visit from the clergy who understood their situation and spoke their language.

Just as they arrived, the Biden administration announced that the Del Rio International Bridge encampment had been cleared out. But thanks to the efforts of the local pastor, the priests were able to meet with some of the Haitians.

“When the migrants saw me and Father Bellonce with the collar, they saw the Church,” said Father Jean-Mary. “We helped them spiritually and psychologically. We guided them through the airport. We are action. Some of the migrants only had the clothes on their back.”

Belizaire and her husband didn’t have anyone to stay with, so Father Jean-Mary put them up in a hotel when they arrived in Miami. Balliston Elidor, a Notre Dame d’Haiti parishioner, heard about the family’s dilemma.

“This husband, wife and small child had nowhere to go,” said Elidor. “They had never been in Miami and everything is foreign to them”

Elidor is a Haitian American and a 50-year U.S. resident who owns a home in North Miami Beach.

“My children are grown and have moved out so I offered the family a room in my house,” he told the Florida Catholic Sunday afternoon. “Tomorrow, I will take them back to Notre Dame d’Haiti Church so they can apply for TPS, temporary protective status.”

Belizaire and her husband had been living in a rented room in Santiago, Chile, since 2017. Although getting to Chile and staying there was easy for them, her husband couldn’t work until he had the proper immigration papers. After eight months in Chile, he got the needed documentation and found work as a forklift operator. But the Chilean people didn’t like the Haitian migrants.

“They thought we were taking their jobs,” said Belizaire. “They were giving us a hard time. It had become unsafe for us.”

The family decided to leave Chile and head for the United States. They took several buses, walked and slept in hotels.

“We left June 4 and arrived in September at Del Rio,” Belizaire said. “We crossed through the bushes and the water to not be seen.”

By the time they arrived at the bridge, they had run out of money.

Belizaire and her husband, who speak Spanish as well as Creole, said they were happy to see Father Jean-Mary and Father Bellonce under the bridge in Texas.

Belizaire has a 10-year-old son in Haiti who is living with her mother. She wants to eventually bring them to the United States.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, about 5,000 Haitian migrants were moved to processing centers throughout the U.S. and another 12,000 were released pending a court date. The rest were repatriated to Haiti or returned to Mexico under a public health rule due to COVID-19. The Mexican government has made an offer to the migrants to stay in Mexico and proceed with legal residency and work permits.

The Haitians’ homeland is reeling from the July assassination of their president, Jovenel Moise, an August earthquake, and the ongoing presence of violent gangs.

Many Haitians had migrated to South America, namely Brazil and Chile, after the massive 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince. As the economic situation deteriorated due to the pandemic, the host governments began rescinding their work permits and urging them to leave.

Father Jean-Mary issued a statement upon his return decrying the “flagrant injustice” of the way the migrants were treated, extolling their courage, and urging the U.S. to do more to alleviate the chaos in their homeland. Read his statement below.

STATEMENT ON DEL RIO BORDER SITUATION

Father Reginald Jean-Mary, pastor of Notre Dame d'Haiti Mission, issued this statement upon his return from a visit to the Del Rio International Bridge on the Texas-Mexico border, Sept. 26, 2021.

“Let me begin first of all by expressing my gratitude to my archbishop, Thomas Wenski of the Archdiocese of Miami, who delegated Father Fritzner and I to assist the migrants at the Del Rio border. We extend also our heartfelt thank you to Randy McGrordy from Catholic Legal Services in the Archdiocese of Miami as well as Mary Ross Agosta of the Office of Communications who coordinated that trip; to all of you in the media that are always there to keep Haiti and the Haitian people in the spotlight.

“Thank you to all the courageous community, faith leaders and people with good conscience who stood up to denounce the flagrant injustice perpetrated against the Haitian migrants at the Del Rio border, Texas. I salute also the courage, the dignity and the state of resilience of our fellow brothers and sisters who despite all the humiliation, the deception and the rejection that they have experienced, have managed to keep their heads up. I salute the greatness and the great spirit of leadership of our elected officials, the legal agencies who remained a voice of conscience for our people.

“What we witnessed at the border of Del Rio is a very inhumane situation. This has been a very horrific, graphic act of dehumanization of the children of God. That place under the bridge of Del Rio was hell on earth as one of the migrants described it. I refer to it myself as the Golgotha experience of the Haitian people. This is a place of deception, humiliation, rejection, condemnation, crucifixion and execution, where there did not exist only mistreatment but most importantly abuses of the fundamental rights of the migrants. We reject and condemn that act of injustice.

“We condemn also the structures that support that injustice, and we call upon the leaders of this administration to follow the law on migration by ensuring the due process to all the migrants, to grant them the process of humanitarian parole, to give them access to apply for political asylum, to treat them with dignity and that a thorough investigation be led in the abuses of the migrants. We ask the Biden administration to stop the deportation, to tell us where they have put the migrants that they have displaced so that we can assist them legally, psychologically and to provide humanitarian assistance.

“We ask also that the State Department continue to work to restore order in Haiti so that the country can find stability and an economic path toward the future. Stop tolerating corruption in Haiti and mingling in the internal politics of Haiti. May a new special envoy be sent to Haiti with the freedom to lead the country toward stability and order. We believe that it is never too late to do what is good, right and just.”