ENTERPRISE, Ala. (AP) – Transitioning from bustling Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to a small town in Alabama at the southernmost tip of the Appalachian Mountains was challenging for Sarah Jacques.
But over the course of a year, the 22-year-old got used to the tranquil and settled in. Jacques got a job at a factory making car seats, founded a Creole-speaking church, and came to appreciate the ease and security of life in Albertville after the political unrest and violence that plagued their homeland.
Recently, however, as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his vice president began spreading debunked misinformation about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, causing crime and “eating pets,” Jacques said there have been up-to-date, unforeseen challenges.
“When I got here, people waved and said hello to us, but now it’s not the same,” Jacques said in Creole through a translator. “When people see you, they kind of look at you like they’re very quiet around you or afraid of you.”
Amid these rising tensions, a bipartisan group of local religious leaders, law enforcement officials and residents across Alabama are viewing the fallout in Springfield as a cautionary tale — and have taken steps to aid integrate the state’s Haitian population in the small towns where they live.
As political unrest and violence worsens in Haiti, Haitian migrants have embraced a program launched by President Joe Biden in 2023 that allows the U.S. to send up to 30,000 people per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua for two years and Venezuela and to grant a work permit. The Biden administration recently announced that the program could allow an estimated 300,000 Haitians to remain in the United States until at least February 2026.
According to census data, there were 2,370 people of Haitian ancestry in Alabama in 2023. There is no official count of the augment in Alabama’s Haitian population since the program’s implementation.
The immigration debate is nothing up-to-date in Albertville, where the number of immigrants has been growing for three decades, said Robin Lathan, assistant to Albertville’s mayor. Lathan said the city doesn’t track how many Haitians have moved to the city in recent years, but said, “It appears there has been an increase, particularly in the last year.”
An Albertville school system official said that last school year, 34% of the district’s 5,800 students were learning English as a second language – compared to just 17% in 2017.
In August, weeks before Springfield made national headlines, a Facebook post showing men getting off a bus to work at a poultry factory led some residents to speculate that the factory was employing people living in the country illegally.
Poultry plant officials said in an email to The Associated Press that all employees are legally allowed to work in the United States
The uproar culminated in a public meeting at which some residents demanded clarity about the federal program that allowed Haitians to work legally in Alabama, while others called on landlords to “cut off housing” for Haitians, suggesting that the migrants had a “smell of them,” it says in audio recordings.
For Unique Dunson, a 27-year-old Albertville resident and community activist, these feelings sounded familiar.
“Every time Albertville gets a new influx of people who are not white, there seems to be a problem,” Dunson said.
Dunson runs a store that offers free supplies to the community. After tensions rose across the country, she put up several billboards around the city that read in English, Spanish and Creole: “Welcome neighbor, I’m glad you came.”
Dunston said the billboards are a way to push back against the idea that migrants are unwanted.
When Pastor John Pierre-Charles first arrived in Albertville in 2006, he said the only other Haitians he knew in the area were his family members.
In its 14 years of existence, the congregation of his Creole-language church, Eglise Porte Etroite, has grown from just seven members in 2010 to about 300 parishioners. He is now adding classrooms for English and driver’s education courses as well as a podcast studio to the church building to accommodate the growing congregation.
Still, Pierre-Charles describes the last few months as “the worst time” for the Haitian community in his entire time in Albertville.
“I see some people in Albertville who are very scared right now because they don’t know what’s going to happen,” Pierre-Charles said. “Some are scared because they fear they could be sent back to Haiti. But some of them are scared because they don’t know how people will react to them.”
Following the fallout from the first public meetings in August, Pierre-Charles sent a letter to city leaders calling for more resources for housing and food to ensure his growing community could acclimate safely, both economically and culturally.
“That’s what I’m trying to do, be a bridge,” Pierre-Charles said.
He doesn’t work alone.
In August, 54-year-old Gerilynn Hanson helped organize the first meetings in Albertville because she said many residents had legitimate questions about how migration was affecting the city.
Now Hanson said she is adjusting her strategy and focusing on the human level.
In September, Hanson, an electrical contractor and Trump supporter, founded a nonprofit organization with Pierre-Charles and other Haitian community leaders to provide more stable housing and English classes to meet growing demand.
“We can look at (Springfield) and become them in a year,” Hanson said, referring to the hostility that existed in the Ohio city that was inundated with threats. “We can sit back and do nothing and allow it to unfold before our eyes. Or we can try to balance some of that and make it so that everyone can be productive and talk to each other.”
Similar debates have spread at public meetings across the state — even in places where Haitian residents make up less than 0.5% of the total population.
In Sylacauga, videos from numerous public meetings show residents questioning the impact of the alleged surge in Haitian migrants. Officials said there were only 60 Haitian migrants in the town of about 12,000 people southeast of Birmingham.
In Enterprise, not far from the Alabama-Florida border, cars crowded the parking lot of the Open Door Baptist Church in September for an event that promised answers to the impact of the growing Haitian population on the city.
After the event, James Wright, chief of the Ma-Chis Lower Creek Indian Tribe, agreed with the reasons Haitians are fleeing their homeland, but said he fears migrants will undermine local “political culture” and “community values.” of Enterprise.
Other participants expressed fears and misinformation that Haitian migrants are “lawless” and “dangerous.”
However, some came to allay growing fears about the migrant community.
Enterprise Police Chief Michael Moore said he provided statistics from his department that showed no measurable augment in crime as the Haitian population has grown.
“I think there were some people there who were more worried about the scaremongering than they were about the migrants,” Moore told the AP.
Moore said his department received reports of Haitian migrants living in homes that violated city code, but when he reached out to the people in question, the problems were quickly resolved. Since then, his department has received no credible complaints about crimes committed by migrants.
“I completely understand that some people don’t like what I say because it doesn’t fit their personal thought process,” Moore said. “But those are the facts.”
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Riddle is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
