By Katie Vasquez
For years, St. Jerome Church has been a safe haven for the Haitian people as a place to share their faith in their native language, Creole.
But the East Flatbush, Brooklyn pastor Father Hilaire Belizaire has noticed that even at the parish’s most popular Mass pews are becoming increasingly more empty.
“It draws 350, 400 people on a regular basis, but that Sunday after the executive order, we had only 260 people in church,” he tells Currents News, referring to U.S. president Donald Trump’s recent executive orders cracking down on immigration.
In one of his latest actions, the Trump administration canceled an extension of Temporary Protective Status or TPS, for Haitians. The program allows immigrants to live and work legally in the country until is safe for them to return.
“They didn’t leave Haiti by choice, you know, but out of sheer necessity, seeking a place of refuge,” explains Father Belizaire, “a place and an opportunity to rebuild their lives.”
Hundreds of thousands of Haitians have been allowed to live in the U.S. through TPS after a devastating earthquake struck the country in 2010.
Now the neighborhood they have begun to call home, known as Little Haiti, is also desolate.
“This is always busy. A lot of people and a lot of merchants,” Father Belizaire has observed of the neighborhood he ministers in. “That’s where you come to get your Haitian products and things.”
There is concern as their time to stay in the country has been cut down, the deadline for their return moving from February 2026 to August 3rd, just months from now.
“They said to everybody to carry their ID or something like that,” St. Jerome parishioners Albert Jean-Baptiste tells Currents News. “So yes, they are afraid because they don’t have any papers.”
“They’re scared to go out. They’re scared to go to work, to send the children to school, you know that. They don’t know whether ICE is coming to pick them up,” adds fellow parishioner Anne-Marie Fils-Aime.
In the meantime, St. Jerome Church is hoping to continue to be a safe space for Haitian migrants in Brooklyn.
“Sometimes I speak to them. ‘Don’t be scared to come to church, God is always there for you,'” says Fils-Aime.
“I feel, as a pastor, very helpless, powerless,” says Father Belizaire, “I only can only pray that, again, justice, compassion, humanity will prevail.”
The parish has distributed flyers informing parishioners of their rights and continues to offer them spiritual guidance.