For New York’s Haitian community, annual West Indian Day Parade means more in trying times

Steel drums, flag-draped floats, and the smell of jerk chicken will fill Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway on Monday, as hundreds of thousands turn out for the West Indian Day Parade.

NEW YORK — Steel drums, flag-draped floats, and the smell of jerk chicken will fill Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway on Monday, as hundreds of thousands turn out for the West Indian Day Parade, one of the largest celebrations of Caribbean culture in the country.

This year, Haitians are marching under more solemn circumstances than in prior years.

Federal immigration enforcement has intensified against Caribbean and other Black immigrant communities over the past year, and Haitians have lost a key protection — temporary protected status. Known as TPS, it let hundreds of thousands remain in the U.S. legally.

Organizers say the parade has become both a defiant assertion of pride and a rare bright spot in a traumatic year.

“There’s a somber cloud over it with everything that has happened from last year to this year with TPS ... what’s happening in detention centers, and those who are being sent back with no valid way of living or supporting themselves,” said Natalie Lafontant, a Brooklyn native who organizes Lespri Ayiti, or “Spirit of Haiti,” the largest Haitian “mas” — short for masquerade — or marching community in Monday’s parade.