This story was written in partnership between FāVS News and RANGE Media, a worker-owned newsroom in Spokane. Learn more about RANGE’s work here.
By Aaron Hedge | FāVS News and Range
Martino Augustil and Dieuvert Novembre came to Spokane after waiting months in Mexico in early 2023 to be admitted to the US. Once they were here, they applied and were approved for a program that lets migrants from countries with dangerous conditions — like their home country of Haiti — stay in the U.S. until things get better.
They both have children in Haiti but have started to build lives here. Augustil’s family has applied to come to the U.S. too, but have not been approved. If the families can’t come, they want to be able to work here and fly back to see them, even if it’s only for a day at a time.
But as with any migrant who came here on a special program, a nascent second Trump administration has thrown their presence in the U.S. into limbo.
Haiti has experienced cycles of turmoil for decades, and while last year’s governmental collapse caused the latest exodus — which also included as destinations the Dominican Republic, Chile, Brazil, France and Canada — the U.S. had welcomed Haitians fleeing the country for years. It did so under a program called Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which went into effect for Haitians in 2010, when an earthquake devastated the county.
On Feb. 20, President Donald Trump revoked TPS for Haitian migrants completely, as well as migrants from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.
“I’ve been looking to see what can we do to fix that,” said Katia Jasmin, the Haitian-American founder of Creole Resources, an advocacy organization that helped Augustil and Novembre get jobs on the West Plains. “What can we do for them to renew? I’m still looking. So far, nothing.”
The revocation is a potential wrench in a deal brokered just before the November election by Jasmin, Laurel Fish and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to get Augustil and Novembre employed.
The partnership was initiated by Fish, a senior organizer for the Spokane Alliance, a nonprofit that builds social relationships with churches, unions, businesses and advocacy groups. Working with Fish, Adam Jackson, an organizer with the Local Teamsters 690, reached out to Peirone Produce, the largest distributor of fruits and vegetables in the Inland Northwest, whose employees the Teamsters represent.
Wayne Boggs, Peirone’s director of operations, hired Augustil and Novembre in December. He also hired Thamar Sauveur, another Haitian immigrant who has her citizenship, as a short-term translator to train them.
“ I had no idea what a large number of [Haitian] folks were here in Spokane,” Boggs said. “It was a bit eye opening to learn that there were that many. You don’t have to be too doggone smart to figure out that most places probably won’t even talk to them, and they might get a job washing dishes somewhere in a restaurant. So I think I look at it as an opportunity.”
Working as union members meant they’d have better workplace protections than other jobs that rely on migrant labor. They get normal union benefits: health care, a pension, even access to education.
The work includes putting together orders for the warehouse. Guided by special headsets that articulate food orders in their Haitian Creole, they stack the items on pallets and deliver them to the appropriate loading bay at Peirone’s warehouse just south of the Amazon Fulfillment Center.
They work the swing shift: Novembre has a drivers license and gets there from his Spokane Valley home by car and Augustil takes the bus from his home in the South Hill.
“They want to be here,” Boggs said. “And there’s a reason they want to be here. They want a better life. I look at it as an opportunity to give these folks an opportunity to own a home, buy a car, have a family. You’re not going to get rich picking up produce, but you can certainly make a decent living and have a family and a home and be part of the American dream.”
Many Haitians living in the Spokane area are terrified to go back to their home country. And now, not only are Augustil’s and Novembre’s jobs in their new country in question, the fact that they’re here through a U.S. government program — their addresses and other information known by the state — means they might be low-hanging fruit for deportation back to Haiti.
But Augustil and Novembre themselves seem relatively unworried about it.
On March 12, RANGE spoke with Augustil and Novembre through Sauveur, who translated for them. Though their future in the U.S. is uncertain, they told RANGE they are from the relatively safe rural coastal region of Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.
Sauveur said Augustil and Novembre are not afraid to go back there. Governors of some regions “are able to have more control of any type of illegal situation,” she said.
“They’re gonna get rid of it. But some people, in some areas, they just allow it to happen, so then that’s when gangs are going to take over that space. But mostly, they don’t have the same situation they have in Port au Prince right now,” which is the capital and most populous city in Haiti where much of the violence in the country is concentrated.
The men love it here and want to stay, but they see their time here as a potentially temporary opportunity and will willingly return if the Trump administration dictates it. They just hope the government gives them enough time to do so with dignity — to buy their own plane tickets and make their own way home.
‘They’d better have a warrant’
Boggs said the company employs many migrants — he estimates about 50% of its 123 warehouse, delivery and sanitation workers are non-white. He’s aware of the Trump administration’s animus toward immigrant communities and said he’s willing to protect the men.
“ If they show up at the door here, they’d better have a warrant because I’ll tell them to leave,” Boggs said. “If I’m court ordered, there’s nothing I can do. Now would we fight for them? We would, but to what degree, depending on what kind of legislation comes down, we may have our hands tied. … But they’re not getting in without a court order.”
Boggs said he grew up in the Inland Northwest and the region is welcoming to people from around the world, a reality he said workplaces should work hard to reflect. He said that in the 10 years he’s run operations for Peirone, the workforce has expanded and become far more diverse and sees increased diversity and financial success as going hand-in-hand.
When he was hired, “Peirone Produce was a $50-million-a-year company,” Boggs said. “We’re now a $163-million-a-year enterprise. When I got here we had one Black worker, a Russian and two Hispanics. Today, I don’t have the exact numbers, but I would tell you that there’s as many non-white people working here as white people.”
Before he started with Peirone, Novembre had been looking for work for a year, trying his hand for a short time at the Amazon Fulfillment Center near Spokane International Airport, where Jasmin has found work for 10 Haitian migrants. But the language barrier was too great for Amazon to accommodate, and he was let go.
“ He wasn’t working for over a year, and due to this program he was able to be working now, saving and doing things that need to get done,” Sauveur, the translator, said.
“Especially with how things are going with immigration status, now he’ll be able to save enough to get his ticket and be able to go home having some type of money to get himself going,” Sauveur said. “A lot of them already know that program was only temporary, so they want to be working so they can have some income savings for when they come in, they’re not struggling.”
Larry Kroetch, principal officer for the Teamsters Local 690, echoed Boggs’s words about going to bat for Augustil and Novembre.
“ We’ll advocate for them to stay here whatever way we can,” Kroetch said.
Kroetch noted that the Teamsters have a history of fighting these kinds of battles, saying they were the first union in the US to allow women and minorities onto the membership rolls.
More recently, the Teamsters’ top national official, President Sean O’Brien, was at odds with Trump after he met with the candidate about immigration during the campaign. Trump was promising to deport undocumented migrants by the millions. According to Politico, O’Brien said that other than Indigenous people in the US, “We are all products of immigration.”
Boggs also said it does no good to worry about potential deportations.
“ I can’t worry about what could happen,” he said “because I’m not going to be able to change it. All I can do is worry about what we got going on right now. Pretty simple. We’ll just do our work, and if they’re looking for a fight, I’ll give it to them.”
Kroetch also seemed unfazed by threats of deportation, seeing the partnership as a model for similar future opportunities with other businesses.
“This isn’t just a concept idea that we want you to try,” Kroetch said. “This is a proven thing. It’s worked. … I think it could be expanded to many other places.”
Fear in the Haitian community
As of last July, about half a million Haitians were living in the U.S. under TPS. Their presence became a flashpoint in the presidential election after Trump and Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance knowingly spread false and racist rumors that Haitians were kidnapping pets and eating them in Springfield, Ohio.
Some of that hate came home to Spokane early this year when the city formally recognized January 1 as Haitian Independence Day and Creole Resources held a cultural event at City Hall. The city social feed filled up with ire over the city hosting an event for the Haitian community.
Jasmin said about 500 Haitian migrants — some on TPS, others with citizenship — live in the Spokane area and says she has helped about 25 people living here under TPS find work. Many came here under harrowing circumstances and cannot return to Haiti out of fear they’ll be killed.
“I know people who traveled through more than 11 countries to arrive here to work,” said Phamania Dalcima, who fled Haiti three years ago and spent almost two years in the Dominican Republic and Mexico looking for scant work and petitioning to get into the US. “People died.”
Dalcima finally was approved for TPS about a year ago and came to Spokane to work for Jasmin.
Dalcima, who goes by Phanie, who is also here under TPS, told RANGE she is improving her English at Spokane Community College and working for Jasmin. She doesn’t know whether she will be deported, but she is afraid of going back to Haiti.
“In Haiti, it’s so bad now. When I heard that [the program was revoked], I was crying and Katia told me, ‘Phanie, don’t cry,’” Dalcima said. “Even if you go over there, we’re still gonna be connected. And I wish that can change. We in Haiti don’t have a life. … It is very, very stressful. I’m struggling. I don’t know what can happen.”
She said that, on hearing the news of Trump’s TPS cancellation, she didn’t understand — her countryfolk were here to be productive members of a society that could support them, something they cannot do in Haiti.
“The first thing that passed through my head is that a lot of people come here to study, to be someone else tomorrow to help this country because they don’t have any opportunity in their country,” Dalcima said.
TPS status is designed to be temporary and is generally lifted once conditions in a country improve enough that people are safe to go home. Trump’s revocation is unusual because conditions have not gotten better in Haiti. It’s actually quite the opposite.
Gang violence in the country displaced 6,000 people in just the first three weeks of February this year, according to a United Nations report issued before February was even over.
Boggs said Americans need to come to terms with a country that is becoming less white.
“America is not what America was 40 years ago,” he said. “I’m 64 years old, and America’s changed. We better change with it. We have a lot of people in this country, and they’re going to continue to come from other nations.”
Sauveur — who like many of her fellow Haitian migrants in Spokane is a Christian woman — said that for Haitians in this moment, the only thing to do is keep working and pray for the best.
“ I am not in control of anything,” Sauveur said. “Only God is and whoever is making the decision. So we can only make the best of the opportunity we get at first. So if that means working 24/7 until that time so you have enough savings to go to the other place you need to go, so you can get a place, get your life started, then that’s all we can really do.”
