This story was written by Teen Vogue's 2024 Student Correspondents, a team of college students and recent graduates covering the election cycle from key battleground states.
Content warning: This article discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is in crisis, please call 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or the National Alliance on Mental Illness hotline at 800-950-6264.
Phede Eugene first arrived from Haiti on the beaches of South Florida with his family in 1979. Haitian immigrants, part of a wave of refugees from the island nation that came to Florida around the 1980s, were already being stereotyped in the US as being high-risk for the then little-understood AIDS virus.
At 17, Eugene became an honor-roll student at Miami Edison High School, where he often tried to hide his Haitian identity. He opted to speak only English and even went by the name “Fred,” according to testimonies from loved ones and local officials.
In 1984, when Eugene’s mother and sister visited him at his after-school job at a local Burger King and spoke to him in his native Creole, he was mortified. He reprimanded his sister, especially since she had inadvertently revealed to his American girlfriend that he was Haitian, United Press International reported at the time. Three days after the incident, Eugene was discovered to have died by suicide.
Eugene’s story has stayed fresh in the minds of Florida’s Haitian community ever since. Dr. Marie Guerda Nicolas, a psychologist based in South Florida and a contributor for The Miami Herald, says she’s thought of Eugene amid the virulent anti-Haitian rhetoric that has spread during the 2024 election cycle. At the September presidential debate, Republican nominee Donald Trump claimed that Haitian migrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio, were allegedly eating neighbors’ pets — amplifying to an audience of roughly 67 million people a social rumor that’s been steadfastly debunked by local officials, including the town’s mayor.
The Haitian-American community has since been reeling from the effects of this baseless rhetoric, grappling with everything from bomb threats to state police being deployed to city schools. The day-to-day experience of Haitian Americans in the Buckeye State and beyond is being dramatically impacted once again.
Dr. Nicolas tells Teen Vogue that, if she had to guess, she’s probably gotten more than 20 phone calls from parents and young students in the weeks since the presidential debate, all in Miami-Dade County alone. “I'm talking about first-graders whose friends want to know if they eat cats at home,” she elaborates. “How do you work with parents to better equip their kids to respond to their friends in school asking them such a question? It's been really difficult for young people."
Dr. Nicolas explains further, "Because the whole point of this is it’s supposed to keep you where you are, you're not able to move forward. You're not able to progress and grow and develop, because you're stuck trying to respond to stupid questions.”
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In Florida, the state with the largest Haitian population in the US, immigrants from the Caribbean island have lived alongside immigrants from Cuba and Venezuela for generations. Some young Haitians in the state say the inflammatory discourse isn’t surprising. Hannah Celian, a 20-year-old Haitian American based in Orlando and a recent University of Miami alum recalls, “My initial thoughts weren’t of surprise or shock because Trump always spews heinous lies and accusations, but it just made me feel exhausted.”
Celian continues via text message, “Haitians have always been perpetuated as savage, uncivilized, and rogue within American propaganda (and globally), and it sometimes feels like nothing we say or do will change that. I know that Trump was fact-checked, but the damage has already been done.”
The Haitian immigrant population in the US has grown significantly since 1980 due to "persistent political instability" in Haiti and, more recently, the "collapse of basic governmental functions and widespread gang violence following the 2021 assassination of the former president," according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. The total immigrant population in Clark County, Ohio, is estimated to be about 12,000 to 15,000. Reuters reported that the rapid population growth in Springfield has come with "growing pains," but increased immigration has brought with it higher wages and a "rising number of job openings in a labor market that remained tight until recently."
Ohio senator and Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance, who helped perpetuate the rumors about migrants allegedly eating neighbors’ pets, mostly glossed over the controversy in the vice-presidential debate on October 1. But he repeated the false claim that Haitians in Springfield were in the country illegally, even though a large number of them have been granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) under the law due to the island nation's current political turmoil, according to ABC News. This summer, the Biden administration granted TPS to Haitians who arrived in the US on or before June 3 of this year.
“Haitians have been net givers in Springfield,” Dr. Nicolas says. “But of course, for anybody coming in to do work in a particular place, you would actually need to create the infrastructure to be able to address their basic needs.”
Dr. Nicolas also knows the impact of the Ohio-based rumors personally: Her sister, Dr. Yveline Alexis, a Haitian American professor at Oberlin College, has been at the forefront of taking attention away from the noise. Says Dr. Alexis, “We actually did a teach-in with scholars from across the college landscape that included political sciences, myself as a historian and African Studies professor… and it was a very fruitful teaching. It was beautiful to see.”
Dr. Alexis adds, “I don't back down from these things. I remember first hearing [what was said on the debate stage], and I'm already used to rocking my Haitian shirts, my jewelry, playing my music extra loud — it’s something I do anyway in terms of promoting my culture. So there's a sense [about] me like, I'm not going to back down from being Black, from being Haitian, etc.”
While Trump has vilified immigrants from many countries, including Mexico, some scholars say the perception of Haitians as uniquely threatening dates back to 1804, when they overthrew their French enslavers to make Haiti the first Black independent republic in the world.
According to 22-year-old Haitian American Maliyah Bazelais-Roc, anti-Black racism and colorism still fuel the layered threats and rumors faced by Haitian immigrants. “Many lack the knowledge, are misinformed, or simply do not care for the truth of Haiti’s history and downfall at the hands of various other nations who did not want us to succeed,” the Florida International University graduate tells Teen Vogue via text message. “It is because of Haiti that many other nations followed suit — some with Haitian aid – to also become free. Anti-Haitian sentiment is nothing new, but this new round being perpetuated puts Haitians everywhere at risk, not just in Springfield, Ohio.”
The Haitian Bridge Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to advocating for fair and humane immigration policies for Haitians and all Black migrants, is working to combat these harmful narratives. In response to the pet-eating comments, the organization filed a complaint seeking criminal charges against Trump and Vance, aiming to hold them accountable for the widespread panic and aggression they’ve since caused.
Guerline Jozef, the organization’s executive director, says they are also working with youth activists on the ground in Ohio to help the Haitian community deal with racially motivated attacks. And, according to Jozef, their organization has noticed spikes in harassment in areas Trump and Vance visit for rallies.
“Wherever [Trump] goes, he carries this sentiment with him," Jozef explains. "And when he leaves, those people get riled up and try to use that against Haitians. Now it's really targeting us personally.”
With all the the noise Trump and Vance have spread on the American right, the Haitian Bridge Alliance is also quick to call out the Democratic Party. The alliance has called on the Biden administration to cease deportation flights to Haiti and pass comprehensive immigration reform.
Young people like UM graduate Celian agree that the anti-Haitian sentiments aren’t tied to one political party in the US. “America relies on the instability of Haiti,” Celian says. “I think [the US] plagues Haitians so specifically because the longer Haiti remains the ‘poorest country in the Western hemisphere,’ to no fault of its own, the longer they can continue to perpetuate it as a country whose people need America to save/rescue them…. A country they can continue to exploit for their own self-serving interests.”
Jozef says she has faith in younger generations to hold lawmakers accountable for the harms they cause Haitians who are hoping to find better lives in a new country they must now call home. “This is a perfect time for the younger generation to join us in this fight,” she points out. “They are our hope to continue the dismantling of anti-Black racism and white supremacist ideologies as we older folks are fighting right now. Their voices are critical in this time, in this moment, to stand up and speak up on behalf of those who might not be able to fight for themselves.”
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