By 
Sophia Pierrelus
By Sophia Pierrelus
Founder and Executive Director of NACC – New American Cultural Center
The hard truth is that Haitian trauma often begins at a very young age, sometimes before children are even old enough to understand what they are witnessing. For decades, Haitian children have grown up exposed to violence and instability. They have seen or heard about people being kidnapped, raped, burned alive, shot, or otherwise harmed.
Sometimes the victims are their parents, siblings, relatives, neighbors, friends, or other people in their communities. Even when children do not directly witness these acts, they hear the stories, hear the gunshots, see the aftermath, and live with the fear of wondering who might be next. As they grow older, some Haitians eventually make the painful decision to leave their country in search of safety, stability, and peace. They leave behind parents, siblings, spouses, relatives, neighbors, friends, homes, businesses, and everything familiar to them.
But leaving Haiti does not necessarily mean leaving the trauma behind.
Many Haitians have traveled through multiple countries, including Brazil, Chile, Honduras, Mexico, and others, trying to find a safe place to rebuild their lives. Along the way, many have faced poverty, exploitation, violence, discrimination, uncertainty, and exhausting journeys. Some have sold or given up the few possessions they had just to keep moving forward. They
have walked from one country to another, sometimes for days or weeks, carrying children and whatever belongings they could manage to keep. They have encountered dangerous environments and frightening situations. Some have been separated from their spouses, siblings, children, or other loved ones because someone became injured, sick, or unable to continue.
They have crossed rivers and other dangerous terrain. Some have witnessed people lose their lives in the water while trying to cross. Some have been forced to drink contaminated water because they had no other choice. They have walked through narrow, dangerous pathways where one wrong step could mean serious injury or death. And yet, they kept going. They kept walking because they believed there had to be something better ahead. Eventually, some made it to the United States. After navigating immigration processes and, for some, appointments through the CBP One system, they believed they had finally reached a place where they could breathe again—a place they had imagined as the land of opportunity, safety, and possibility.
But then came another form of trauma: starting over. There was the culture shock. The language barrier. The difficulty finding housing and employment. The unfamiliarity of the American legal, financial, healthcare, educational, and immigration systems. There was discrimination. There was isolation. There was the challenge of trying to understand a society that operated very differently from the one they had known. Many had imagined America as a place flowing with opportunity. Instead, they discovered that survival could take many forms here too. And while they were trying to adjust, another layer of psychological pressure emerged.
They heard rhetoric describing Haiti as a “shithole country.” They heard accusations and degrading rhetoric about Haitian immigrants. They heard the false and inflammatory claims about immigrants eating cats and dogs. They watched their communities become targets of political rhetoric and public suspicion.
Imagine carrying the trauma of everything you survived before reaching this country, only to arrive and wonder whether you are wanted here. Imagine finally beginning to stabilize your life, learning the system, finding work, supporting your children, and sending money back home to relatives—and then suddenly facing another period of uncertainty. For many Haitians, that uncertainty has involved changes to immigration protections such as Temporary Protected Status (TPS), uncertainty surrounding work authorization and driver’s licenses, and increased immigration enforcement. Some people with pending asylum cases have faced additional reporting requirements, including check-ins with immigration authorities and, in some cases, electronic monitoring.
Once again, the question becomes:
What happens to me now?
The same person who thought, “Finally, I can breathe,” is once again asking, “Where will I go?
What will happen to my children? Will I be deported? How will I survive? How will I continue supporting my family here and the family I left behind?”
For many, the fear is not only about themselves. It is about the people depending on them. Perhaps they were finally able to send money to their parents. Maybe they were helping a sibling pay for food or school. Maybe they were supporting relatives who remained in Haiti or elsewhere. Their ability to work in the United States became connected to the survival of people thousands of miles away. Then there are Haitian Americans who have lived in the United States for decades. They are watching all of this happen to people in their communities. They hear the rhetoric. They see the uncertainty faced by immigrants. They watch families struggle. And some begin to wonder whether the country they have called home for 20, 30, 50 years still sees them as belonging.
They may ask themselves:
If they come after TPS holders, what happens next?
Could other immigrants with lawful status face new uncertainty?
What about green-card holders?
What about our U.S.-citizen children?
Even when these fears concern possibilities rather than established policy, the uncertainty itself can become a source of stress and trauma.
That is the part people often do not see. Trauma is not always a single dramatic event. Sometimes trauma is the accumulation of everything. The violence you witnessed as a child. The person you lost. The home you left. The family you had to abandon temporarily. The dangerous journey. The river crossing.
The hunger. The fear. The separation. The discrimination. The language barrier. The struggle to rebuild. The fear of deportation. The uncertainty about tomorrow. The constant question of whether the life you worked so hard to build can suddenly disappear. And yet, despite all of this, Haitians continue to demonstrate extraordinary resilience. They keep working. They keep raising their children. They keep going to school. They keep building businesses. They keep sending money home. They keep caring for their families. They keep helping their communities. They keep dreaming.
But resilience does not mean the absence of pain. A person can be resilient and still be depressed. A person can be strong and still be anxious. A person can continue working while constantly overthinking what might happen next.
A person can smile in public while privately living with fear, grief, and exhaustion. That is why we need to talk about Haitian trauma—not simply as something that happened in Haiti, but as something that can follow people across borders. And the trauma does not belong only to recent immigrants.
It can affect Haitian Americans who watch their community struggle. It can affect parents who worry about their children. It can affect children who hear adults discussing deportation, violence, immigration raids, or the possibility of losing the lives they have built.
And it can create a collective sense of uncertainty:
What happens next? At the same time, there is another question that cannot be ignored: How do we help Haiti become a place where people do not have to risk their lives simply to find safety? How do we confront the guns, kidnappings, political instability, poverty, and violence? How do we strengthen Haiti’s institutions? How do we create security and economic opportunity? How do we build a country where children can grow up without becoming accustomed to violence?
How do we create conditions in which Haitians can choose to leave—not because they are running for their lives, but because they want to explore the world and eventually have the freedom to return home?
These are enormous questions, and there are no simple answers. But one thing is clear: we cannot talk about Haitian migration without talking about Haitian trauma. Behind every immigration case is a human being. Behind every person walking across a border is a story. Behind every family separated by immigration policies is grief, sacrifice, and uncertainty. And behind many Haitian immigrants is a lifetime of surviving things that most people will never have to experience. They did not simply arrive in America.
Many of them survived an extraordinary journey to get here. Now they are trying to survive what comes next. And perhaps the most painful part is that, after everything they have already endured, many are once again living with the same question that followed them from the beginning:
Where will we be safe?
Where will we belong?
What happens next?
And how do we build a future where our children do not have to carry the same trauma we carried?
Those questions deserve to be heard—not with judgment, but with humanity.
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