For New York’s Haitian community, annual West Indian Day Parade means more in trying times

NEW YORK (AP) — Steel drums, flag-draped floats, and the smell of jerk chicken will fill Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway on Monday, as hundreds of thousands turn out for the West Indian Day Parade, one of the largest celebrations of Caribbean culture in the country. This year, Haitians are marching under more solemn circumstances than in prior years. Federal immigration enforcement has intensified against Caribbean and other Black immigrant communities over the past year, and Haitians have lost a key protection — temporary protected status.

Known as TPS, it let hundreds of thousands remain in the U.S. Organizers say the parade has become both a defiant assertion of pride and a rare bright spot in a traumatic year. “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,” said Natalie Lafontant, a Brooklyn native who organizes Lespri Ayiti, or “Spirit of Haiti,” the largest Haitian “mas” — short for masquerade — or marching community in Monday’s parade.

Still, she said, the response to hardship is not surrender. “But if you know anything about the Caribbean, especially about Haiti, we use music, dance, art, to continue to strive and push through,” Lafontant said while taking stock of parade costumes at a community center. Keeping parade plans alive amid anti-immigrant policies In June, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Mullin v.

Doe that federal courts cannot review the Trump administration’s decision to end temporary protected status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants, clearing the way for roughly 350,000 Haitians to lose the protection. A federal judge finalized the order in early August, and work permits tied to Haitian TPS expired July 27. Lafontant’s group, comprising about 180 artists, designers, musicians and residents, is marching in the parade for the second year.

The group struggled to find float sponsors this year. “All the insurances that we’ve got to cover, the people who walk, you’ve got to take care of them, the costumes, the designers. You add that all up, it’s a very hefty bill.

But we continue to do it because we love our country,” said Lafontant. Haitians’ history with New York goes back decades Lafontant is part of a Haitian community that numbers roughly 163,000 in … legally.Organizers say the parade has become both a defiant assertion of pride and a rare bright spot in a traumatic year.“There’s a somber cloud over it with everything that has happened from last year to this year with TPS ...