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

NEW YORK (AP) – Steel drums, flag-draped floats, and the smell of jerk chicken filled Brooklyn's Eastern Parkway on Monday, as hundreds of thousands turned out for the West Indian American Day Parade, one of the largest celebrations of Caribbean culture in the country.

This year, Haitians marched 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 United States legally.

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