NYC Mayor, Public Advocate urge Haitians to celebrate, find ‘reprieve’ at Labor Day parade

NEW YORK — City officials had a simple message for Haitians wondering if they might have to worry about ICE during the biggest celebration of Caribbean culture in New York: ‘Come and celebrate’ what might be a moment of reprieve.

“I encourage everyone to come out and celebrate,” Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani said during a Sept. 4 news conference in response to a question from The Haitian Times.. 

Flanked by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams and City Councilmember Rita Joseph, the Mayor was speaking during a security briefing ahead of Monday’s festivities. From the portico atop the Brooklyn Museum — in front of which costumed bands make their final performances to officially end their band’s procession — several sought to reassure attendees about security and immigration enforcement concerns.

“We are all united in what this parade is, which is a celebration of the Caribbean community, without which so much of what we love about New York City would not be the city that we call home,” Mamdani said. 

“This is going to be a weekend, this is going to be a Labor Day where each and every New Yorker has the space to celebrate that.”

With the termination of TPS weighing on them and permanent residency applications stalled in recent months, many in the Haitian community have chosen to remain inside their homes to avoid potential encounters with ICE. According to the AP, in July alone, ICE arrested nearly 50,000 people in a blitz to meet the Trump administration’s deportation goals.

Neighborhood businesses, churches and other establishments have all felt the decline in foot traffic as people opt to self-quarantine to avoid being detained, if not deported. In addition, some have said they were not feeling festive, listing the recent suicide of Pierre Damas Bel and mass killings in Kenscoff.  

Haitian parties and cultural moments have also seen a dip in participation, artists and promoters have told The Haitian Times in recent months. 

Comedian Alexandre “SeJoe” Ducasse was among those who said he has seen the numbers drop at shows where he has performed recently. As Labor Day approached, he wondered how much that pattern might hold for weekend’s typically well-attended festivities.

On Friday, when asked how the city might respond to potential ICE actions during the festivities, Tisch reiterated that the NYPD does not engage with civil immigration enforcement.

“We do not coordinate with ICE,” she said.

Williams, who has been making the rounds across the city’s immigrant neighborhoods to share Know Your Rights information – with a megaphone in hand at times – said he wants to make sure people are empowered with the facts about what they actually can do “so we can have some courage in a time of fear like this.”

“The fact that we have the mayor that we do, the police commissioner that we do, and the elected officials that we do, we’re going to do everything in our power to protect everyone that’s here, and so we want everybody to come celebrate,” Williams said Friday. 

“It may be a moment of reprieve in a very tough time,” he added in a separate interview with The Haitian Times afterward. 

“Tactically, it will be difficult for ICE to do some of the abductions that they’re doing, with this many people on the parade, with so much activity and action going out,” he said. “They are really doing evil work.”

The parade steps off at 11 a.m. and will end “promptly” at 5:30 p.m. — earlier than usual — “given the history of violence we have seen on and around the parade route at that hour and later,” Tisch said.

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