Heather Wasler is surrounded by the sound of hymns sung in Haitian Creole when she attends weekly Presbyterian service at the Hope New Worshiping Community in Charleroi. Among her friends and neighbors, she listens to the call to worship spoken in Creole, then translated to English. When the local church formed last September with the goal of becoming a communal place of worship and giving back to residents, Wasler approached some of the Haitian women in the community to ask what the church could provide for them.
They asked for a safe place for their children to play.
Southwestern Pennsylvania’s Haitian immigrant community has felt heightened tensions for more than a year and a half since then-candidate Donald Trump claimed they were straining resources and ruining quality of life in Charleroi, a Washington County borough where hundreds had settled. Late last year President Trump’s administration revoked the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation that allowed Haitians to live and work in the United States while violence and instability rocked their home country, though that revocation was halted by a judge and is now before the Supreme Court. Even with the support of friends and neighbors, the recent death of Haitian immigrant Daphy Michel, following ICE detention, elevated the community’s worries.
Michel, a 31-year-old Haitian immigrant with an active asylum claim, could have reunited with her family soon after misdemeanor charges against her were dropped at a preliminary hearing on Feb. 26. Instead, ICE took her the following day from the Washington County jail to their South Side field office, without notifying her family, according to Joseph Murphy, the family’s immigration lawyer. Three days later, she was found unresponsive inside an East Carson Street bus shelter and later pronounced dead at a hospital.
“Our worst nightmare came true,” Wasler said. “Daphy represents everything that’s happening right now.”
Questions unanswered cause elevated fear
As Anide Limage looked around Michel’s first prayer vigil in Charleroi on Friday, March 20, she could see the pain on her neighbors’ faces.
“They think that can happen to them, too,” she said. “I can tell there is a lot of fear in the community right now.”
Limage, a Haitian immigrant and president of women’s empowerment group Fanm Vanyan, moved to Charleroi about four years ago and felt at home in the historic town about an hour south of Pittsburgh. She moved there to start a business but closed it last year as the Haitian population declined after racist messages urging white residents to “take up arms” circulated following the president’s comments.
She closed her business and helped form Fanm Vanyan, Haitian Creole for “women empowerment,” where she provides people with food, diapers, clothes and legal services, and engages the community through events. The organization helped plan the Charleroi prayer vigil for Michel to show their support to her family.
Compounding their sadness for Michel, Limage and other Haitian residents question what happened to her in the three days before she was found.
Michel settled in Charleroi after entering the country legally under humanitarian asylum in 2022, according to Murphy. In September, he said, a neighbor witnessed what she believed to be Michel having a mental health crisis in which she was seen holding a knife and yelling outside, and she was arrested for misdemeanor threats and harassment. After she spent six months in jail because she could not post bail, a district judge dismissed the charges. According to Murphy, the judge found that she did not threaten any specific person.
After Michel was taken to the South Side field office, she was processed and given a GPS ankle monitor as part of the Alternatives to Detention program, then released on Feb. 28.
Jaime Martinez, of Frontline Dignity, said he was out of town when he received a call on the organization’s immigration response hotline at 7 p.m. on Feb. 28. The caller from the South Side told him about a woman speaking Haitian Creole with an ankle monitor. The caller said the woman appeared to need help, and Martinez referred them to an alternate response hotline. While Martinez said there is no way to confirm this was Daphy, he was devastated to see her death announced a few weeks later.
When she was found unresponsive at the South Shore bus shelter on the morning of March 2, she was still wearing her ankle monitor issued by ICE. According to weather reports, temperatures dropped to around 20 degrees Fahrenheit during those three days.
The Allegheny County Office of the Medical Examiner has not yet released a finding on Michel’s cause and manner of death.
“It’s not something like she went to the hospital because she was sick. They just found her on the street,” Limage said. “It wasn’t fair for a human being to just be found like that.”
Haitian residents are concerned similar circumstances could put them at risk, especially with the administration’s continued comments about their country and amplification of negative news stories about immigrants, plus previous local threats.
“They need answers because they feel their life is in danger, too,” Limage said.
The Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, released a statement on X saying they had nothing to do with Michel’s death. In the statement, they said she was an “illegal alien” who was encountered by ICE after her arrest. “She was released with all of her belongings, including a fully charged phone, in sunny weather in the middle of Pittsburgh, where public transport is readily available,” the department posted on X.
Murphy said Michel entered the country legally and was taken by ICE after her charges were dropped. He said she had an immigration hearing scheduled for April.
Murphy questions why ICE left Michel in an unfamiliar area an hour away from her home.
“I don’t think she even knew where she was,” he said. He is working to find answers to provide the family with some closure. “They’re good people, and they didn’t deserve this.”
Neighbors attempted to help, but were unsuccessful
The streetlights flickered on as the sun set while a crowd of about 60 listened to Haitian poetry and calls for justice during a second vigil honoring Michel’s life on Sunday, March 29, at the bus shelter in South Shore where she was found. People gathered from a variety of neighborhoods to offer condolences to Michel’s family and condemn ICE.
During the vigil, attendees chanted, “We will show up for each other, we will not let people disappear” as they laid tea candles and flowers near Michel’s photo inside the bus shelter. They expressed their frustration, demanding answers and humane treatment toward immigrants.
“There is a mix of gratitude for the folks that could do something and anger that what they did could not have been enough that day despite their best efforts,” said Martinez, one of the vigil organizers, “and a hope that a situation like this is never replicated again.”
Martinez was moved by how many people recognized Michel as a neighbor, even if they didn’t know her personally.
“The definition of neighbor is not just who lives next door to us,” he said. “It’s the people we interact with, and the people we don’t interact with, but we’re still bound to.”
Wasler, a family friend of Michel’s, wiped tears from her eyes as she stood with the crowd at the South Shore bus shelter.
She and her husband, Taris Vrcek, have bonded with many of their Haitian neighbors by sharing food, music and culture through the Hope New Worshiping Community. About two-thirds of the church leadership comes from the Haitian immigrant community. Wasler and Vrcek work closely with the other church leaders to aid where they can, from collecting donations to providing transportation to immigration hearings.
Over the past two years, they have witnessed heightened fear among their friends, to the point that some people are afraid to leave their homes.
“I think the hardest thing is that our friends have become so dehumanized that people are just able to write them off,” Wasler said. “And I think one of the saddest things for us with Daphy is that it was getting brushed under the rug.”
After learning of Michel’s treatment, Wasler and Vrcek worry more of their neighbors will be at risk, and potentially lose their lives, if TPS is revoked.
“We have close friends in this community, and we know that they are so vulnerable if TPS ends,” Wasler said.
At the local prayer vigil, Wasler told Michel’s family there are more supporters, even beyond their town. “Remember how I told you there were more people out there?” she asked Michel’s brother. “Your sister is not going to be forgotten.”
Sophia Lucente is a freelance reporter and photographer in the Pittsburgh area and can be reached at sophia.lucente@outlook.com.
This story was fact-checked by Rich Lord.
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