Haiti Action Committee

09/04/2026

Say His Name Pierre Damas Bel. https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=486125 Sept. 3rd episode of KPFA Flashpoints with Pierre Labossiere and Robert Roth responding to the tragic su***de of Pierre Damas Bel.

Haiti Action Committee mourns the tragic death by su***de of 20 year old Haitian Pierre Damas Bel following the Trump Administration’s termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. Pierre was forced to begin his first days of college – where he was enrolled as an honor student – shackled with an ICE ankle monitor. He was distraught about being forced to wear this humiliating and dehumanizing device. Being robbed of his legal US status threatened all that Pierre had accomplished and all that he envisioned for his future. And so a promising young life has tragically been ended.

Pierre Damas Bel is a victim of the Trump Administration’s vicious racial hatred targeting Haitians. Like Emmett Till, like Hind Rajab, sometimes one person’s story confronts us with the immediacy and impact of systemic cruel injustice. Pierre Damas Bel's story is such a one. It compels us to take action to stop what is happening to hundreds of thousands more Haitians who were deprived of legal US status overnight and are living in fear of ICE gestapo apprehension and expulsion. This is racial targeting, this is othering, this is fascism. We can and must fight for them. We demand safety for Haitian families. Stop the deportations! Abolish ICE! Demand that the Senate pass S 4814 legislation so that Haitian TPS holders can retain their legal status through 2029.

09/03/2026

KPFA Flashpoints Dennis Bernstein speaks with Brian Concannon of the Institute for Justice & Democracy In Haiti about the tragic su***de of Pierre Damas Bel that was provoked by the intentional cruelty of the Trump Administration's racially targeted deportation policy. https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=486038

09/02/2026

On Monday morning, 20-year-old Pierre Damas Bel called his father on video. “I’m not feeling okay mentally because of the bullying,” Pierre told him. His father told him to come home so they could talk.

Pierre never made it home.

Less than an hour later, Pierre parked his car on the shoulder of Interstate 70 outside Springfield, Ohio, got out, and walked into traffic. A tractor-trailer struck and killed him.

Thirty-three days earlier, ICE had put a GPS monitor around Pierre’s ankle. Pierre told people what it was doing to him. “I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone.”

He wrote that walking around with the monitor left him feeling “shame and humiliation” and asked how he was supposed to play college sports with it strapped to his leg.

Pierre had graduated from Springfield High School with a 3.8 GPA, belonged to the National Honor Society, played varsity soccer, served as a lieutenant in Marine Corps JROTC, worked at Texas Roadhouse, volunteered, helped other students learn English, earned scholarships, and had just started at Wright State University to study neuroscience. His teachers, employer, and coworkers wrote letters begging the immigration court to let him stay. A retired Marine captain gave Pierre his “highest endorsement,” praising his Honor, Courage and Commitment.

Pierre did everything America tells immigrants to do. Learn English. Work. Study. Serve. Volunteer. Stay out of trouble. Go to college. Build a future. And after he did all of it, America put an electronic tracking device around his ankle and made him walk through the community he had worked so hard to join feeling like a criminal.

After Pierre died, his father said, “The government treated my son like an animal.” ICE responded by confirming it had placed Pierre on electronic monitoring on July 29, then explaining that people fighting removal don’t have to stay here and wear monitors. They can self-deport, take a government-arranged flight, and collect $2,600 after leaving. Pierre was dead at twenty, his father was grieving, and the agency that put the monitor on his ankle essentially responded: He could have left.

And don’t make the mistake of thinking Pierre deserved dignity because he was exceptional. Take away the 3.8 GPA, the soccer, JROTC, scholarships, volunteer work, college, and Marine captain. Pierre still deserved to be treated like a human being. Human rights aren’t fu***ng merit badges.

There should have been more photographs of Pierre. College. Soccer. Graduation. Maybe medical school. Maybe an entirely different life he hadn’t imagined yet. Instead, among the final photographs he shared was one showing the GPS monitor around his ankle. Thirty-two days later, Pierre called his father and said he wasn’t okay. His father told him to come home.

Pierre never made it home.

And if you’re looking for the shame in this story, stop looking at Pierre.

The shame belongs to the country that made him feel it.

09/02/2026

08/28/2026

In Springfield, Ohio, ICE agents are targeting a community that Trump has been villainizing since 2024.

08/28/2026

Remembering Fr. Jean-Marie Vincent, beloved champion of the impoverished Haitian people, assassinated in 1994 on August 28th during the brutal military regime that overthrew Haiti's first democratically elected government. One of Haiti's leading proponents of Haiti's liberation theology movement known as Ti Legliz, and a close friend of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Vincent was a 49-year old activist priest who was dedicated to uplifting Haiti's poor. Following the 1991 coup, more than 100 clergy were arrested, jailed, beaten or driven into hiding by the military regime. In condemning his brutal murder, his religious congregation said, "In our eyes, only our brother’s thirst for justice, his ardent service on behalf of the excluded and those cast aside, can explain his assassination. It surely comes from all those who are opposed to change in our country. The enemies of change wanted to kill the dreams of the poor peasants of our country, for whom Jean-Marie was councilor and animator." Fr. Vicent lives on within the hearts of the Haitian people.

08/27/2026

Latest Massacre In Haiti Reveals Yet Again Cruelty of Revoking TPS Status for Haitians. Haiti Action Committee condemns the wave of massacres in Haiti and we demand that the Trump Administration stop deporting Haitians. https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/08/27/latest-massacre-in-haiti-reveals-yet-again-the-cruelty-of-revoking-tps-for-haitians/

08/13/2026

This video is in remembrance of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, Haitian revolutionary, father, husband, friend, psychologist, human rights activist. We share this video from July 28, 2007 as Lovinsky led a protest in front of UN headquarters, Port-au-Prince, on the anniversary of the 1915 US Marines invasion and occupation of Haiti. His speech made the connection between the current US/foreign occupation and the 1915 US occupation. Lovinsky invoked the Haitian revolutionaries, like Charlemagne Péralte, who fought to end the 1915 invasion, and he said that that legacy of revolutionary struggle lives on in the people today. He said the people would always fight to uproot neocolonialism and exploitation—they would always fight for their freedom.

Two weeks after Lovinsky’s speech, he was kidnapped and disappeared, never to be seen again. Since then, many more people have been killed, r***d, starved, and forced from their homes with impunity. We will not forget them, but will stand in solidarity with those who continue to struggle.