A reminder of what Haiti has become is there, in the mirror, anytime she wants to look. A large scar runs from her ear and down her jaw, toward her chin.
The wound is from an attack she suffered in her parents’ home at the hands of machete-wielding gang members, according to legal filings submitted to support her asylum claim. The woman requested to be identified only by her first initial, E., as her asylum claim is ongoing and she fears for her life if she is forced to return to her home country. During the assault, a blade cut her face, arm, and leg before she was able to flee.
Her parents were hacked to death in that attack, according to court filings. E. breaks down in sobs when she talks about it. She believes her father, a supporter of the late dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, may have been targeted for his political views.
“He could have been talking and giving his own opinion,” she said through an interpreter. “He loved the Duvaliers.”
Her future could hinge on this detail. For this surge of migrants from Haiti, who are fleeing gang violence that has upended the government and thrown the economy into chaos, winning asylum status is a chief pathway to building a life in the United States. To be eligible for asylum, an applicant must be unable or unwilling to return to their country because they fear persecution on the grounds of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
Proving persecution can be a difficult task, however, even for people from Haiti, where those who have fled say the lines between politics and gang violence are often blurred.
“Cases of just general gang violence are not that strong,” said Jen Bade, a Brookline immigration attorney. “You have to connect the violence with one of the [five] categories.”
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Last year, only 4 percent of Haitian national asylum cases nationwide were approved. The success rate of Haitian cases in Boston immigration court is unclear, but about 20 percent of all Boston asylum cases were approved in fiscal 2023. Fifty-one percent of approved asylum claims in the United States were grounded in political opinion, according to federal statistics.
There are two types of asylum claims: affirmative and defensive. Affirmative is for those who are not in deportation proceedings, and defensive is for those who are. Affirmative cases go through an asylum officer with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, while defensive cases land before an immigration judge.
The asylum process can be long, with many applicants waiting for years while their case winds through the established processes. Last year, the majority of cases for Haitian nationals — nearly 90 percent nationwide — were either not adjudicated, abandoned, or withdrawn. The process allows immigrants to stay in the United States while their applications arebeing considered.
There are paths to citizenship or permanent residency other than asylum, but many of them are narrow in scope. They include family-based immigration, which requires a close relative who currently has US citizenship or permanent residency to petition federal authorities, and visas for victims of human trafficking, crime, or spousal abuse, if the abuser is a US citizen or permanent resident. Employment-based immigration, which is usually tethered to specific work, is another way in, but that doesn’t apply to many Haitian nationals, according to immigration attorneys.
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For nearly all Haitians, “asylum is literally the only avenue . . . to citizenship/permanent resident” status, according to Mara Weisman, a staff attorney of Catholic Charities of Boston.
For E., going back home isn’t an option, but she will likely be stuck in limbo, waiting for her asylum case to be processed, for years.
“It’s worse, worse now than when I was there,” she said of Haiti.
In the here and now, she is staying at an old motel north of Boston. She has work authorization but isn’t working; she had a baby boy in January, and the newborn’s arm was seriously injured during his birth and requires special care. She isn’t working at the moment because of that, she said, but emphasized that she is willing to perform whatever work is available when her son’s health improves.
“Any work, I’ll do it,” she said through an interpreter.
Her path to Boston was a winding one, taking her from Haiti to Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Mexico, before she crossed the American border at Hidalgo, Texas. She traveled by bus and on foot with her partner and two of her children, now 12 and 3.
“The reason why I’m here is because I hear this is where they are helping others,” E. said. “I have no family here.”
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Weisman said there is no “expiration date” once gangs target you in Haiti.
“She would be targeted if she went back,” she said.
According to data from Massachusetts-based resettlement agencies, 1,436 Haitian nationals relocated to Massachusetts in February alone. The previous month, the number was 951. In December, 858 Haitian nationals came to the state.
The asylum applications often detail harrowing tales of why Haitians fled their home. L., another applicant whom The Boston Globe is identifying by his first initial for fear of violent reprisal if he is sent back to Haiti, is currently staying in a hotel south of Boston. Back home, he was a human rights advocate, the son of farmers. He would hold seminars and teach victims of rape, abuse, and human trafficking their rights. On International Women’s Day in 2014, he was giving a talk in Croix-des-Bouquets when gangs arrived at the building where he was speaking and opened fire. He fled through a back door.
Like E., his path to Boston was lengthy. He fled Haiti for the Dominican Republic, then moved to Ecuador, and later to Brazil for a time, where he said he did not feel safe because Haitian gang members could still reach him. He tried to move on to Chile, but it was difficult to obtain permits for things such as housing and employment. Eventually he slipped “into the jungle,” he said, referring to the dangerous Darien Gap. He took a bus through much of Central America. He applied for asylum in the United States in January of last year.
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“I know if I go back there, I’m a dead man,” he said of Haiti.
Gang violence and politics are inextricably intertwined in Haiti, L. said.
“The government itself is the gang,” he said. Some police are involved in human trafficking, he said. Reporting to the relevant government’s human rights agency was at times useless. The state views a challenge to any of its agencies as an affront to the entire government, he said.
“I’ve already been attacked and threatened in Haiti many times for being a human rights worker and reporting abuses,” read a legal filing in his asylum claim case. (Like E.’s case, his asylum claim is defensive, meaning both are in removal proceedings.)
He called his exile from Haiti “the biggest sadness of my life.”
“I’m not God, but in my opinion, it’s a lost country,” he said through an interpreter.
Carl Pierre, meanwhile, is an asylum success story. It took more than 11 years, but the Port-au-Prince native eventually earned asylum. He credits the work of Bade, his immigration attorney. Back home, he was a math and French teacher, working his way through law school. He was also an activist, advocating for workers’ rights, including a minimum wage. This meant he was a target.
Gang members armed with machetes showed up at his mother’s house asking for him. He wasn’t home. The gang members were allied with the government regime, which he’d angered with his advocacy. After that, he fled.
“The politicians get involved with gangsters, they have a partnership,” said Pierre in English recently during a phone interview. “When they want to get reelected, they rely on gangsters. Now, it’s become worse.”
Like others, he holds no illusions about his prospects of returning to his homeland.
“If I go back there, I’m going to be killed, I know for sure,” Pierre said.
He came to Greater Boston because an uncle of his was living here and he had nowhere else to go, he said. Pierre, 40, lives in Malden and works for a biotech company. Winning asylum, he said, has offered him a future, putting him on a path to become a legal resident and, eventually, a citizen.
“Without any legal status, you always feel scared,” he said.
Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him @Danny__McDonald.