Pierre Damas Bel was a Haitian student with a bright future — along came the Trump administration

Pierre Damas Bel was 20 years old. He came to the United States from Haiti to join his parents and pursue an education. He graduated from high school with honors, participated in JROTC, played soccer and dreamed of becoming a doctor.

Then the Trump administration terminated Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. Although Bel had a pending asylum claim, immigration authorities summoned him and placed a GPS monitor around his ankle.

Bel expressed that humiliation himself in an Instagram post on July 30: “I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone. Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience.”

On Monday, Bel pulled his car onto the shoulder of Interstate 70 near Springfield, Ohio, got out and walked into traffic. A tractor-trailer struck and killed him. His grieving father refused to believe that he died by suicide.

We should be cautious about drawing straight lines between government policy and an individual human tragedy. Suicide is complex, and only those closest to Bel knew everything he was carrying. But we must be equally careful not to look away from the burden our government deliberately placed upon him: fear, humiliation, uncertainty and the constant threat of expulsion to Haiti.

I know what that threat means.

I have spent most of my adult life telling stories about Haiti and its people, and for decades I traveled there as a journalist, as a publisher and sometimes just to visit home. During a 2021 reporting trip with my colleague Vania André, I asked our driver to pull over so we could send up a drone to capture a landscape I found haunting and strangely beautiful.

He said it was too dangerous.

The landscape looked perfectly tranquil, and I almost argued with him, but I thought better of it. Months later, the gang 400 Mawozo kidnapped 17 missionaries, including several Americans, in that exact part of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

I have not returned to my country since.

Haiti today is not merely experiencing political instability; it is unraveling. Armed groups control large swaths of Port-au-Prince. Families have been driven from their homes, schools and businesses have shuttered, and kidnappings and massacres are part of daily life.

The United States warns its citizens against traveling to Haiti. Yet Washington continues to deport Haitians to the island. Consider the moral contradiction: Haiti is deemed too dangerous for an American citizen to visit, but perfectly acceptable as a landing pad for people America chooses to expel.

Nobody is forcing the United States to send people like Bel there. The Trump administration is choosing to do so.

Many Haitians facing removal have spent years fleeing instability. Some left Haiti for Brazil, then moved to Chile as Brazil’s economy slowed. When doors closed there, they traveled north — through jungles and across borders — until they reached the United States.

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Garry Pierre-Pierre

Garry Pierre-Pierre, the founder of The Haitian Times, is the Director of Partnerships at URL Media. A former reporter at The New York Times, he is working on his memoir.