PITTSBURGH, PA - Like any other bus shelter in Pittsburgh, I had passed by the bus stop at Smithfield & East Carson hundreds of times, never giving it a second glance. On Sunday, though, it had transformed into a shrine, decorated with candles, flowers, and photos of Daphy Michel, a 31-year-old Haitian immigrant, who was found unresponsive there on March 2nd with an electronic monitor from an ICE detention facility attached to her ankle.
In September, Daphy had been arrested in Charleroi, nearly an hour away, after she was found yelling and screaming in the street. It's unclear what initiated her mental health crisis, but it was clear that her small Haitian community was being heavily targeted by Trump in high-profile remarks.
“The housing market is destroyed. Crime is rampant,” said Trump at a rally near Chareloi in 2024. “The jobs are taken by migrants illegally imported to our countries.”
In recent months Trump’s rhetoric against Haitians has only intensified as he removed Temporary Protection Status from 400,000 Haitian refugees in the United States.
As Trump ramped up his rhetoric against Haitian immigrants, Daphy Michel’s mental health condition worsened. Then, in September, she was found in the streets of Chareloi yelling. The police were called and Daphy was arrested.
For 6 months Daphy languished in the Washington County prison with her family unable to afford bail, and the prosecution unable to figure out criminal charges to pin on her for simply yelling in the street. Seven times, her trial was postponed as her family worried about her wellbeing in prison, and prison officials did not perform a mental health evaluation.
Finally, on February 26th, a judge in Washington County dismissed all the charges against her, and it looked like she was going to be released from jail. But, the heavily GOP-Washington County has an agreement with ICE that forces them to notify ICE whenever an immigrant like Daphy is arrested. So when she was released from jail, she was handed over to ICE.
ICE held her for a day on Pittsburgh’s South Side. ICE enrolled Daphy into the “Alternatives to Detention” program, slapped an electronic monitor on her ankle, and released her out into the cold on Pittsburgh’s South Side.
ICE didn’t return her to her home or notify her family members of her release. Instead, they attached an ankle monitor and left her on Pittsburgh’s South Side, an hour from her home. For five days, she roamed the streets of Pittsburgh, unable to return to Charleroi as there is no easily accessible public transit connecting the two cities.
On March 1st, Jaime Martinez, an immigrant rights organizer with Frontline Dignity, began receiving phone calls from immigrant rights activists, who spotted her waiting in an alley on the South Side. The activists observed that Daphy had been waiting in the alley for nine hours on a cold March Day, but she repeatedly refused help.
The activists offered to pay for an Uber for her, but she refused and kept insisting a ride was coming. Eventually, she vanished, and the next day she was found unresponsive at the bus shelter on Smithfield and East Carson Street. She was rushed to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital. The tragedy of her death led even a seasoned immigrant rights activist like Martinez to cry.
“This is a really hard thing to speak about…. II's one that's filled me with a lot of grief lately,” Jaime told the crowd as he choked up.
“The neighbors called and they tried to do something, and what they did wasn't enough, because there is a system that works to dehumanize us and it kills us, and it sometimes overpowers the strength of community, as much as we want community to be the absolute force,” said Jaime as he battled back tears.
Many activists at the memorial, who had been fighting ICE day and night for more than a year, cried with Martinez. Two weeks ago, I returned from Brasil after two months reporting there, and when I got back, I noticed how drained and tired most of my immigrant rights activist friends in the USA were compared to my friends in Brasil.
“Authoritarian systems do not only control using laws and weapons, they control through fear, through exhaustion, through confusion, through making people feel powerless, through making people doubt their own thinking, through isolating people from one another,” says Liana Maneese, a therapist who runs Transitional Characters.
“The antidote to that is not just individual therapy. The antidote is liberation. This antidote is critical thinking. The antidote is community,” says Liana. “Protecting each other means we build a community that is stronger than the systems that are failing us. There is a long tradition that teaches us that liberation is collective.”
So on Sunday, immigrant rights activists gathered to grieve and honor the memory of Daphy Michel. Tyra Jamison, a Haitian-American involved in the Black Socialist Formation, recited a Haitian prayer.
“We praise the honorable leaders of our tradition, and we praise the truth. We praise the power of the collective destiny,” says Tyra as she pours water in a libation. Nearby, some of Michel’s family members and her boyfriend watched as a sea of largely white strangers gathered to honor Daphy Michel.
While some have speculated that Daphy died as a result of a mental health crisis, for Tyra it's clear that her mental health problems were exacerbated by her imprisonment and pending deportation.
“We recognize that Daphy's life was cut short by the violent systems of the US, Western capital class and its comprador partners, both in Haiti and here in the US, with no care for her wellbeing or humanity,” says Tyra. “Michel's passing at a bus stop, at this bus stop on Pittsburgh's South Side, is a tragic reminder of Black and African people's need at this time in history, for working people to have collective control over our governance system.”
Sony Ton-Aime, a Haitian poet who has lived in the United States for 16 years, rose to speak after Tyra.
”I'm a poet, and the work of a poet in Haiti is to memorialize moments, like first communions, wakes, funerals, and weddings. And we're always called to write a poem,” says Sony. “And in Haiti, we have this word called ‘konbit’ where we come to work together. We do things together. And so everyone is called to bring what they can, what they have. And my words are the only things that I have that were worthy of this moment.”
Sony then read the poem he wrote to honor Daphy, first in Creole and then in English.
“The good God, who made the sun that laid his life on Earth, received her into his arm with words we all know, no weapon formed against Daphy will prosper. Her name will flower in the sun, where ice melts,” Sony concluded.
Though he is a prominent poet and executive director of the Pittsburgh Arts and Lecture Series, Sony said that what happened to Daphy scared him personally.
“I’m scared, to be honest, scared, but at the same time, angry, because a human being is a human being, and whatever happens to someone can happen to me, and this is closer to me, because this is someone who looks just like my sister, but also share my skin color, share my nationality,” says Sony.
Sony states bluntly that the death of Daphy is another sign of the “boomerang effect” of how violence used by colonial powers abroad eventually comes back to be used against those in the colonizer country.
“This way of not giving any regard to human lives is a danger to all of us,” says Sony. “And it doesn't matter what your status is here, it doesn't matter what your background is. You're always close to that.”
But on Sunday, at the memorial, Sony Ton-Aime says that he felt heartened by the sense of community that activists are building in the wake of her tragic death.
“It is good to see you all come in here for someone you did not know,” says Sony. “But deep down, you know you knew her because she was you.”
Photos and Videos by Amos Wolf
