Hundreds of thousands are expected Monday for the Labor Day parade on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, and Haitian marchers are entering the West Indian Day Parade under more solemn circumstances. Natalie Lafontant, organizer of Lespri Ayiti, said the mood has darkened because of TPS, detention centers and deportations.
Lespri Ayiti is the largest Haitian mas in Monday’s West Indian Day Parade, with about 180 artists, designers, musicians and residents taking part for the second year. Lafontant said the group had to cover insurance, walkers, costumes and designers, calling it “a very hefty bill,” but said it continues because it loves its country.
Natalie Lafontant and Lespri Ayiti
Lafontant said, “There’s a somber cloud over it with everything that has happened from last year to this year with TPS... what’s happening in detention centers, and those who are being sent back with no valid way of living or supporting themselves,” She added, “But if you know anything about the Caribbean, especially about Haiti, we use music, dance, art, to continue to strive and push through.”
The parade remains one of the largest celebrations of Caribbean culture in the country, but Haitian participation this year is shaped by the loss of TPS and intensified immigration enforcement against Caribbean and other Black immigrant communities over the past year. That leaves the march with a different tone even as it moves through Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway as planned.
Mullin v. Doe and Haitian TPS
In June, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Mullin v. Doe that federal courts cannot review the Trump administration’s decision to end TPS for Haitian and Syrian immigrants. The ruling cleared the way for roughly 350,000 Haitians to lose protection, and a federal judge finalized the order in early August. Work permits tied to Haitian TPS expired July 27.
Most Haitian migrants in New York settled in Brooklyn neighborhoods including Flatbush, East Flatbush and Crown Heights, and the New York metropolitan area now has roughly 163,000 Haitians, the second-largest Haitian population in the country after the Miami metropolitan area. For many families, Monday’s parade will still be a public gathering, but Lafontant’s account makes clear that the procession is carrying the strain of the last year with it.
Brooklyn on Eastern Parkway
Haitians arrived in New York in waves beginning under Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, whose repression and economic collapse drove many to leave Haiti in the 1970s and 1980s. Migration continued after his 1986 ouster, and the parade now lands in a community shaped by that history and by the losses tied to TPS.
With hundreds of thousands expected on Eastern Parkway, Lespri Ayiti is still marching. The unanswered piece is how many Haitians will join them after the loss of TPS, but the group’s decision to show up anyway gives Monday’s parade its clearest meaning: celebration without leaving the pressure outside the route.
