PANHANDLE, Texas— The truck driver is cutting his lawn on a windy afternoon, in a town so quiet you can take afternoon walks down the middle of Main Street.
Kevenson Jean is leaving the next day for another long haul and wants things neat at the two-bedroom home he shares with his wife in the Texas Panhandle town fittingly called Panhandle. So after mowing he carefully pulls grass from around the flagpoles in his front yard. One holds the Haitian flag, the other American. Both are fading in the sun.
The young couple, who fled the violence that has engulfed Haiti, thought until a few months ago that they could see the American dream, somewhere in the distance.
Now they are caught up in the confusion and fear that are rippling through the immigrant communities that dot this region. Newcomers have come here for generations to work in immense meatpacking plants that emerged as the state became the nation’s top cattle producer. But after President Donald Trump moved to end legal pathways that immigrants like the Jeans have used, their future — as well as the future of the communities and industries they are a part of — is uncertain.
“We are not criminals. We’re not taking American jobs,” said Jean, whose work moving meat and other products doesn’t attract as many U.S.-born drivers as it once did.
He’s been making more money than he ever imagined. He’s discovered the joys of Bud Light, fishing and the Dallas Cowboys. When she’s not at one of her two food service jobs, his wife, Sherlie, works on her English by reading paprback romances, the covers awash in swooning women. “We did everything that they required us to do, and now we’re being targeted.”
“Leave the United States”
The message was blunt.
“It’s time for you to leave the United States,” the Department of Homeland Security said in an early April email to some immigrants who had legal permission to live in the U.S. “Do not attempt to remain in the United States — the federal government will find you.”
This is what Trump had long promised
Immigration into the U.S., both legal and illegal, surged during the Biden administration, and Trump spun that into an apocalyptic vision that proved powerful with voters.
The White House rhetoric has focused on illegal immigration and the relatively small number of immigrants they say are gang members or who have committed violent crimes. However, the Trump administration also has sought to end many legal avenues for immigrants to come to the U.S. and revoke the temporary status of hundreds of thousands of people already here, saying people had not been properly vetted.
Jean is among roughly 2 million immigrants living legally in the U.S. on some sort of temporary status. Most have fled deeply troubled countries: Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sudan. Many are allowed to work in the U.S. and have jobs and pay taxes.
Jean is sympathetic in ways to the immigration crackdown. “The White House, I respect what they say,” he said. “They are working to make America safer.”
“But I will say not all immigrants are gang members. Not all immigrants are like a criminal. Some of them, just like me and my wife, and other people, they are coming here just to have a better life.”
The administration told more than 500,000 Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and Haitians they would lose their legal status on April 24, though a judge has put that on hold. About 500,000 Haitians are scheduled to lose a different protected status in August.
