I have a painful confession that should probably shame me, but doesn’t. Driving home to Glen Ellen recently, while listening to NPR on my car radio, I suddenly flew into a violent rage, grabbed Stephen Miller – Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff, and architect of his racist, anti- immigrant campaign – by the throat, crushed his windpipe and began smashing his face into my dashboard, over and over until it was unrecognizable pulp. I then shoved him out the door, drove over his body, back and forth two or three times, and then headed on home in tears. Not tears for Stephen Miller, but for one of his latest uncountable victims.
The source of that rage was the NPR report I was listening to about the death of 20-year-old Pierre Damas Bel, a college student from Haiti, legally in the U.S. on a temporary protected status permit that allowed him to live and work here. Bel had come to America in 2024 to be with his family, who had also been granted temporary protected status and purchased a home in Springfield, Ohio. Perhaps you remember Springfield? That’s where Maga maniacs claimed Haitian immigrants were eating the community’s pet cats and dogs.
The Bel family are among the estimated 731,000 or more Haitian immigrants in the U.S., about 60 percent of whom are naturalized citizens, and most of whom contribute to the U.S. economy, paying taxes and working in mostly service jobs. Haitians are a key part of the health care industry, serving as home health care aids, nursing assistants and in other necessary but unpopular low-paying jobs.
Why so many Haitians in the U.S.? A long history of Haitian political and social dysfunction, compounded by two devastating earthquakes and an enormous hurricane that, in the course of about 10 years, together killed close to half-a-million people, left more than 1.5 million Haitians homeless, and shattered government institutions and basic law and order.
Now, following the 2021 assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moise, the country has descended into a chaotic nightmare of violence, with heavily-armed criminal gangs controlling some 90 percent of Port-au-Prince and much of the countryside. Kidnapping, extortion and rape are commonplace and between April and June of this year more than 1,400 people – half of them children – are known to have been killed. It is common for bodies to litter the landscape, where they are sometimes eaten by feral hogs. If ever there was a country from which to flee with your life, it is present day Haiti.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been trying to end Temporary Protective Status for Haitian immigrants, and finally won Supreme Court approval in a June decision that allowed TPS to end for Haitians on August 7.
That decision was ultimately a death sentence for Pierre, after ICE agents placed an ankle monitor on him, and explained he would ultimately be exported back to Haiti. Pierre had already graduated with honors from Springfield High School, was a standout soccer player, and had enrolled in Wright State University. He was well liked, was active in ROTC, and hoped to become a doctor.
But Pierre couldn’t put on his ROTC uniform because of the ankle monitor, and he wrote on Instagram he was “carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience.”
On top of that, he knew conditions back in Haiti were beyond dangerous. Rumors had been circulating there that Haitians who “self-deported” from the U.S. were given $2,600 by ICE. There is no evidence that’s true, but reports had already reached Pierre of terrified returnees running for their lives as soon as arriving flights emptied at the Port-au-Prince airport, afraid waiting gang members would kill them for the imagined money.
And so, terrified about having to return, shamed by the ankle monitor about which he was teased, Pierre Damas Bell went out to nearby Interstate 70 and stepped into the path of a truck.
Carl Ruby is a senior pastor of the Central Christian Church, in Springfield, and he told NPR that Pierre’s family is “devastated and they’re angry, because this was just so unnecessary. This young man had never even had a traffic ticket, posed no threat at all. He was just terrified about going back to Haiti.”
That’s why, in a fit of ICE-inspired rage, I imagined myself killing Stephen Miller on the way home. Had he actually been in my car, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have really done it. So far, I haven’t felt remorse.
Bravo. My Ukranian cousin is also on tps and awaiting them to deport her. She was living and working in Texas when they took away her right to work. She called me and said, “I am scared and without working (two jobs) she had to give up her apartment. Could she come to Sonoma? Of course. I went to drive with her as Texas, now being a seperate country, has check points on boarders between Texas and the U.S. We want back roads to New Mexico and arrived safely. She brought what she could fit in the trunk of her car and a dog and cat. Life in limbo as status has changed 3 times since. Now, a possible 6 months reprieve; so this highly educated woman is dog sitting and babysitting and sleeping on my couch.
And then, on Tuesday, the dome of hate was lifted by the American people. No more fear, no more loathing, no more Steven Miller (maybe, kinda). Thanks for keeping the first Amendment alive David but it might be time to switch to decaf.