(Dobbs) “I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone.”

He died without an ounce of sympathy from ICE.

Sep 4

Last Monday morning, Pierre Damas Bel stopped his Toyota sedan on the shoulder of a freeway in Springfield, Ohio, got out of the car, and stepped into the line of traffic. He was hit by a semi, and died.

It was a tragedy.

Pierre was only 20. His life didn’t have to end that way, or that soon.

He had been an honor roll student in high school. He was in Junior ROTC, he worked extra hours at a restaurant called Texas Roadhouse, and now was just starting his freshman year at Wright State University. He went to his first classes just last week. His dream was to study neuroscience.

He didn’t have so much as a traffic ticket to his name.

But Pierre had one strike against him: he was Haitian. He had come into the U.S. legally in early 2024 while the Biden administration was still running the government. He went to Springfield to join his two brothers and his parents, and started the process of applying for Temporary Protected Status, the program passed by Congress 25 years ago and signed by President George HW Bush, meant to protect foreign nationals who claim that if they go home, their lives will be in jeopardy. Anyone who has followed the breakdown of civil order in Haiti can understand why Pierre Damas Bel made that appeal. It’s what we usually call “asylum.”

But the American tradition of open arms for the tired, the poor, “the huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” ended with Donald J. Trump. Especially if they came from Haiti.

During his first term, during a meeting in the Oval Office with leaders from Congress, he called Haiti a “shithole country” and asked, “Why do we want people from Haiti here?” Then, while he was out of office, he told Fox News, ”Many of those people will probably have AIDS and they’re coming into our country and we don’t do anything about it. We let everybody come in. It’s like a death wish for our country.”

Then during his 2024 campaign to get back into the Oval Office, he and his running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance set a fire. First, in a post on X on September 9th, Vance wrote, “Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”

The post got almost ten million hits.

Trump, never one to let a good story get in the way of the truth, amplified Vance’s unfounded accusation in a presidential debate the next night: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” His campaign even pushed the slogan, “It’s coming to your city next.”

But it didn’t even end there. Trump toadies from Ted Cruz to Elon Musk picked up on the whole thing and made it worse, Cruz posting a picture of two kittens hugging and a single sentence in all caps: “PLEASE VOTE FOR TRUMP SO HAITIAN IMMIGRANTS DON’T EAT US.”

Two facts for the record. One is, everyone from Springfield’s mayor to its police department and even Ohio’s Republican governor said the whole story was a bunch of bunk, which is no surprise, coming as it did from a pair of bunko artists like Vance and Trump. The police issued a statement to the Springfield News-Sun that said, “There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

The other is, Vance shamelessly admitted not long after that he made the whole thing up: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” As if it doesn’t matter who gets hurt when he does it.

And sure enough, at a news conference five days after the falsehood went viral, Trump announced, “We will have the largest deportation in the history of our country. And we’ll start with Springfield and Aurora.” That’s Aurora, Colorado, another of Donald Trump’s biggest anti-immigrant targets.

Which came back to haunt Pierre Damas Bel. This year, Trump closed the program for Temporary Protected Status and ICE called in Haitian immigrants and told them they had to wear ankle monitors so the agency could keep track of where they were, pending final judicial decisions on their appeals. ICE calls them “alternatives to detention.”

Pierre’s was attached to his ankle on July 31st. It hit him hard.

He said in post on social media, “I came to this country to pursue my education. 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. I came here to study,” he wrote, “to build my future, and to live a better (life) not to be treated like criminal. So now, how am I supposed play college sports with a GPS monitor on my leg?”

His father said in a statement after his son died that his depression had been deepening: “When he’s among his classmates at the university….he was bullied a lot with a lot of people telling him he’s a criminal.”

Monday morning, less than an hour before he threw himself in front of the truck, Pierre called his father, who later recounted, “He said, ‘Dad, I’m not feeling ok. I’m not thinking right … because of the bullies.’”

There are several things that might have driven Pierre’s suicide. The bullying. The fear that he would soon be sent back to Haiti. The pain of the association between the shackles Haitians wore when they were enslaved, and the shackle-like ankle monitor he was forced to wear today.

But after the death of this promising young man itself, here’s the next worst thing about this whole story: when asked to comment on Pierre’s death, ICE could come up with nothing better than a reiteration of its policy: “No one is required to stay in the United States illegally and wear a GPS monitor. Illegal aliens have a lawful, voluntary option: they can self-deport through the CBP (Customs and Border Protection) Home app. Eligible participants receive a government-arranged flight home and a $3,000 check.”

It topped it off with a boilerplate summary of its position: “Remaining in the country illegally, while fighting removal, is a choice. Leaving with a free flight home and $2,600 is also a choice.” (There is no explanation for the disparity of figures about the government check.) “ICE will continue to use detention or alternatives to detention as needed (for) those illegal aliens who stay in violation of the law.”

That was it. Pierre Damas Bel made a choice. To stay in the U.S., to step in front of the truck.

But here’s what’s missing: sympathy. There’s not an ounce of it. Not an iota of it. ICE could have restated its policies and still added a sentence somewhere that said something like, “Our condolences go out to the young man’s family.”

But that’s if it had any decency. From its sometimes brutal treatment of immigrants, from its sometimes brutal treatment of Americans who protest its policies, we know it doesn’t. Nor does the president who leads it.

To some of them at least, Pierre’s death is not a tragedy. It’s just one less pet-eating illegal from a shithole country. The only tragedy in their minds is that so many immigrants, hoping for a better life, have come to our nation’s shores in the first place.

Well, they don’t have to worry anymore about Pierre Damas Bel.

[Salon] “I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone.”

(Dobbs) “I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone.”

He died without an ounce of sympathy from ICE.