The latest of thousands of innocent victims of inhuman ethnic cleansing carnage, Pierre Damas Bel was a 20-year-old Haitian honor student, soccer player, aspiring doctor and “beautiful soul” in Ohio who, overwhelmed by the shame of an ICE shackle and the fear of being sent back to his ravaged country, walked into highway traffic and took his life – another brown life senselessly extinguished by a cabal of sadists indifferent to their own cruelty. “Li te chagrin,” said his grieving father. “He was heartbroken.”
Hopefully, years from now, history will tell of the ceaseless racist atrocities perpetrated by the “abomination against humanity” that is this administration. For now, lest we forget, it feels vital to periodically document them. Never mind the petty crimes – the grifting, gilding, lying, tawdry abuses of taste and common decency. If justice ever catches up to them, let it be for the death, pain, loss, terror, the litany of stupid deadly barbarity afflicting hundreds of thousands of people of color, that began with the obscene gutting of USAID. In barely a year-and-a half, that early DOGE madness swiftly led to over 760,000 global deaths, two-thirds of them children, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, of hunger and once-preventable disease. Experts say deaths could reach 14 million by 2030, including 4.5 million children under five. But not to worry: Li’l Marco says “no one has died.”
At home, DHS and its ICE Gestapo have presided over about 675,000 deportations and perhaps 2.2 million “self-deportations,” mostly by those who’d committed no crime but having the wrong skin color. They’ve been nannies, taco-makers, scientists, academics, kids with cancer, families split, people who peaceably lived and worked here for decades. Often, they abruptly vanish into an opaque detention system that holds them incognito, moves them away from family and lawyers, and ships them back to countries they fled in terror. Lately, cruelly, illegally, over 23,000 have been whisked to 26 third countries not their own to which they have no ties: Afghans, Iraqis, Cubans, Nicaraguans sent to Mexico, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Djibouti, Central African Republic – “Like hell – countries so unsafe the U.S. warns “Don’t Go,” and if you do leave us your DNA to be ID’ed when you die.
Implausibly, the regime keeps upping the barbarism. In August, in a first, about 20 people shackled at waist, wrists and ankles were sent to Liberia, where six – four Cubans, a Brazilian, a Cameroonian – refused to disembark. ICE thugs beat them, threw them back on the plane, told them they were headed to the U.S., and dropped them in a fourth country, corrupt, repressive, newly popular Equatorial Guinea, where the venal son of its longtime dictator, banned from the U.S., somehow got a brief waiver long enough to wrangle a deportation pact to take America’s refuse for just $7.5 million, a deal all around. In Guinea, armed guards took the arrivals to a former luxury hotel turned detention center, where they’ve been held in “horrific conditions” and legal limbo; lawyers say the U.S. is using 3rd-and-4th country threats to pressure migrants back to their lethal countries.
Of those not yet deported, a regime “hell-bent on imprisoning as many immigrants as possible” has detained over 610,000 brown and black people – more than the population of Atlanta, Baltimore or the state of Wyoming – less than 4% of whom have criminal records; they include an average of 25 children 3 or younger a day. In a new initiative, an “army” of attorneys from over 50 organizations and law firms are trying to free about 1,900 kids from custody, many stranded without their families, before “they get chewed up and spit out by the child detention system.” But the regime remains relentless: A judge just again blocked their latest malevolent effort to kill still-constitutionally-protected birthright citizenship; they argue this new, more narrow move reflects “a commonsense agenda” by only trying to block those born to parents deemed “an alien enemy.” Evil incarnate.
Meanwhile, in “the most stark testament to (their) lawlessness,” this week marked the anniversary of “a year of murders” as the regime killed at least 227 people in boat strikes in the Caribbean declared “absolutely criminal” under U.S and international law. The consensus:“There is no plausible legal justification for the strikes. The term for premeditated killing is murder.” But the upcoming 25th anniversary of 9/11 shows MAGA world still feels free to spew their racism, however specious. In “an insane, blatantly racist” hit piece on Abdul-El Sayed, now-right-wing CBS blathered the date “invited scrutiny” of his past posts – like his mourning “devastation perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my faith”? Translation: “Tell us about the scary Muslim man.” One MAGA sage: “El-Sayed has (a) ‘Quacks like a duck problem.” James Talarico: “I wish our government would go after pedophiles the way they go after brown men headed to work at 7am.”
Or honor students wanting to become doctors. In 2024, Pierre Damas Bel came to the U.S. legally via the Biden-era CHNV program, settling in Springfield, Ohio with his two younger brothers and their parents, who had bought a home there. At Springfield High, Bel quickly acclimated: He excelled academically, played varsity soccer, enrolled in the Marines’ JROTC, was in the National Honor Society and worked at a local restaurant. When he graduated in May, he was one of a handful of seniors who won a local college scholarship and an Award of Excellence from the Business Advisory Council; he was also recruited to play soccer at Wittenberg University, where he planned to study neuroscience and physiology in hopes of going on to medical school. He had filed for asylum, and was scheduled to appear for a hearing at immigration court in October.
In preparation for court, he had assembled multiple, glowing references from local mentors. His JROTC instructor wrote Bel “exhibits the type of individual character that makes our society great. He has my highest endorsement that he will make us proud and be value added to our nation.” “From the moment Pierre came to Springfield, he has done everything needed to be a valuable, upstanding member of American society,” wrote one of his teachers. Along with excelling at school, he “utilized all its opportunities to better prepare for his future (and) realize his fullest potential (to) continue to succeed and give back to the country that helped save him from the threat of violence. I have no doubt he will only continue to deepen and broaden not only in his personal growth, but in his dedication to the city, state and country where he has chosen to make his home.”
In June, the right-wing zealots of SCOTUS allowed Trump to terminate Temporary Protection Status for up to 350,000 Haitians legally in the U.S; they include up to 15,000 who were welcomed to, and helped revive Springfield despite the infamous, bonkers, they’re-eating-the-pets claims first promulgated there by racist shitgibbon J.D. Vance. In fact, most TPS holders are decades-long U.S. residents who contribute nearly $6 billion to the U.S. economy and pay over $1.5 billion in taxes. More than 111,000 work in health care as nursing assistants or home health aides; others work in construction, agriculture, hospitality and food production, which is why the abrupt termination of legal protections for so many law-abiding, hard-working immigrants who happen to be Black was widely denounced as “an abomination” and “unthinkably cruel.”
It was also torched as a depraved move that “blatantly ignores reality on the ground and knowingly puts lives at risk.” The State Department gives today’s Haiti a Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory, citing a “high risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, rampant gang violence and limited health care.” Armed gangs control large swaths of the country, more than half Haitians don’t have enough to eat, overcrowding in cities is “a public health disaster waiting,” the risk of a major earthquake remains, Port-au-Prince is too dangerous for even U.S. deportation flights to land, and deportees arriving in Cap-Haïtien with nothing but the clothes on their backs – and, if they’re lucky, maybe $130 – are reportedly either “running for their lives” or trying to push their way back onto planes. Even Haiti’s prime minister has declared, “This is not the time to send people back here.”
In Springfield, where the Haitian community “had taken one hit after another,” the end of TPS sparked terror. ICE sightings and arrests soared, people afraid to leave their homes lost their jobs, hundreds had to be fitted for painful ankle monitors; for many, they evoked the chains of slavery, prompting an “Unshackle Springfield” protest. On July 29, Bel was notified he had to wear a monitor. The next day, he posted photos on Instagram of his awards, soccer triumphs, referral letters. “I came to this country to pursue my education,” he wrote. “I didn’t come to commit a crime or hurt anyone. Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the U.S. with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation I never imagined I would experience. I came here to study, to build my future and to live a better life, not to be treated like a criminal.”
Friends texted messages to comfort him: “We will fight for you,” “Keep praying, Young King.” A prosecutor called the imposition of a monitor, rarely used even for drug traffickers unless deemed a serious danger or flight risk, as “staggering” and “grossly disproportionate” for a 20-year-old student who’d never gotten a traffic ticket. Bel was so upset he drove twice to nearby ICE offices, pleading it be removed; both times, officials refused. The heavy monitor, and his new uncertain immigration status, made him unable and ineligible to play soccer at Wittenberg. He transferred to Wright State University; on August 24, he arrived there as a freshman, but he was teased about the monitor. A few days later in ROTC, again due to his new legal status, he was the only person who didn’t get handed a uniform.
“Everything was fine with him before this happened,” said his father Pierre Ronal Bel. “They put an ankle monitor on him, and everything changed.” For his son, the monitor was a constant reminder the life in America he’d worked to build could be taken away at any moment. It had already taken much of what he felt gave his life purpose; he was ashamed of it, and terrified it meant he would be sent back to Haiti. “He didn’t go to work, he wouldn’t eat,” he said of the energetic kid who until recently had loved his life, friends, family, education. “It was his first week of classes, but he didn’t feel he was learning anything because he was traumatized. He’d wear long pants so people wouldn’t make fun of him….A 20-year-old living their life shouldn’t feel like it’s a crime.”
Early Monday morning, his son called him crying, sitting in his car by the side of the road. “He said, ‘Dad, I’m not feeling OK. I’m not thinking right. I can’t do it any more. I can’t take the bullies.’ I told him, ‘Come home, so we can talk.'” The call ended; the father kept trying to call the son back, there was no answer. A few hours later, police arrived at the house. They said Pierre had walked into traffic on I-70, thrown himself under a tractor-trailer in the westbound lane, and was pronounced dead at the scene. Days later, his family issued a statement saying they wanted people to know their son and brother had committed suicide, and he’d been driven to it by this regime’s grotesquely inhumane immigration policies. Said his father, “He felt like he was treated like an animal.”
“Multiply this story by millions,” said one horrified observer, “and we get a sense of the moral monstrosity this country is committing.” “This is our worst fear and nightmare come true,” said a member of Haitian Bridge Alliance. “Our government, our system, our Supreme Court – they are all complicit in the death of this young man.” Yola Lamarre of the Haitian Community Network concurred. “They all have blood on their hands,” she said. “Pierre Damas Bel was not a criminal, but he was treated as one.” At vigils this week, devastated friends, residents, community leaders mourned “the loss of this incredible young soul.” They reminded others feeling hopeless, “Your status does not define you – your life is precious.” They vowed, “Someone must be held accountable for a life upended and destroyed,” “We are not going to be silent,” “We have to do more.”
Dr. Leo Moore, who trained and worked alongside Haitian doctors, grieved “the loss of a future physician in a country in desperate need,” imagining how Bel, with his education and character, could have lifted Haiti up: “Pierre was on his way to becoming one of those physician who understands both the body and a patient’s story. His community needed him, in that Wright State classroom and, one day, in a white coat…Instead, we are left with tragedy and stolen potential.” Pastor Carl Ruby of Central Christian Church recalled “a friendly, joyful, very smart young man (who) everyone loved.” “This was so unnecessary,” he noted. “I am supposed to be forgiving. But right now, as I sit with a broken family, I’m crying out to God for righteous judgment of those who made this happen.” The furious Dropkick Murphys: “Don’t tell us everything is fine.”
– YouTube www.youtube.com
An abomination: Haitians about to be deported Photo by Getty Images
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