Christopher Rufo
An exclusive interview with a Haitian immigrant from Charleroi, Pennsylvania
and
“I’m Not Mad at Americans”
Under the Biden administration, an unprecedented flow of 7 million migrants has entered the United States, through licit and illicit channels, including more than 1 million parolees. Several hundred thousand of those have come from Haiti.
Those Haitians have entered through a designated route: the parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV). The initiative, which the Biden administration enacted in October 2022 and recently declined to renew, allows individuals from those four countries to enter the United States for up to two years; for Cubans and Haitians, it also lets them collect welfare benefits, such as food stamps, cash assistance, and employment services. What began as a two-year parole program could, for many, turn into a longer stay, as the Department of Homeland Security announced in June that it would extend Haitians’ eligibility for Temporary Protected Status to February 2026.
The federal government runs a multibillion-dollar apparatus of government agencies, NGOs, and other institutions to settle the current wave of Haitian migrants in cities and towns across the country—including Charleroi, Pennsylvania, a small Rust Belt borough that has watched its demographics transform.
We spoke with many of Charleroi’s old residents and with some of the recent Haitian arrivals, including a man who asked to be identified only as Rene, out of fear of reprisal. Rene, 28, arrived in Charleroi at the beginning of this year. He was a truck driver in Haiti and has worked to integrate into American life.
But he also raised concerns: about exploitation, corruption, and the refusal of many Haitians to assimilate. Rene’s story reveals the fraught dynamics of migration and provides a vivid illustration of how the system works.
The following interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Christopher Rufo for Substack: Can you walk us through the process of migrating from Haiti to the United States?
Rene: It’s called the Humanitarian Parole Program. My sponsor applied for me. My sponsor is my cousin’s husband. My cousin has been in the U.S. for about two years. He was living there legally before me. He went to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website and filed an application. He had to prove his income and an address to host me. The U.S. government knows everything about him through his Social Security number. He has a clean record. When I got approved, they sent me travel authorization documents in a PDF. It is pretty easy. It takes time to get approved; for some people, it can take a year. It took me six months to get approved.
But some people manage to leave without going through the airport. They cross the border of the Dominican Republic and from there, they leave the country. Once they’re in the Dominican Republic, I’m not sure how they leave, but I think some people do manage to come to the U.S. that way.
Christopher Rufo for Substack: And what happens when you arrive? How did you get to Charleroi?
Rene: I paid for my own plane ticket to New York City, and my cousin picked me up. I came to the country basically with nothing. When I got here four days later, I went to the DHS office to get government assistance, like food stamps.
I had to wait two and a half months to get my work authorization card, which is required if you’re an immigrant and want to work in the U.S. I had to pay $410 for it, but they raised the price and now you have to pay $470.
Once I got my work authorization card, I started working at Fourth Street Foods in Charleroi, through Celebes Staffing Services. A friend who had worked for them before told them I was looking for a job. Because I speak a little bit of English and I know computers, I wasn’t an assembly line worker. I was doing a job called “paperwork” and then I had to work on the computer. And then after that, I was a supervisor. I wasn’t working directly with the company. My paychecks came from Celebes.
Christopher Rufo for Substack: What was it like working at the facility?
Rene: There’s two Fourth Street Foods facilities, a north plant and a south plant, both in Charleroi. I worked at the north plant, which had around 250 to 280 employees—not including the Americans in the office. I’m talking about the assembly line workers.
I think room one had 60 people and they were all from different agencies. I can be working for Celebes and the person next to me could be working for Wellington Staffing Agency. So you never know how many people are from which agency. It is not only Haitians working there; there are also Asians and Africans. But the Americans, they work in the offices.
Assembly line workers only got $10 an hour, but they recently raised it to $12. In my jobs, I started at $10, then $11.75, and finally $16 an hour when I became a supervisor. I worked there for about 2 months.
We worked in the freezer. If you’ve been to Charleroi, you will see a lot of people in high temperatures wearing coats. Fourth Street Foods does not provide coats. We had to buy our own.
It’s not an easy job, working in the cold. If you cannot work the hardest you can, you’ll get fired so they can get better workers. Fourth Street Foods is not for the weak. You can’t work, you go home. Pretty simple and easy to get fired.
Fourth Street Foods needs these immigrants because they accept any treatment. The company knows that it can use them because they don’t know their rights. It’s sad.
Christopher Rufo for Substack: What was your experience with the staffing company?
Rene: The staffing agency took money from our wages. If the real rate was $16 an hour, they might take $4, saying it was for transportation and to run the agency. And they give you the rest of the money.
It would be much better to just apply directly to the company, but they make a business out of it. I don’t think $10 or $12 an hour is enough. It would be more if we worked directly with the company, but these agencies are somehow making some money out of their employees and it seems like it benefits the company, too.
It wasn’t enough money. I was just doing it temporarily. I didn’t want to just sit at home and do nothing. I was going to do it until I found something better.
Fourth Street Foods should stop using agencies and let people work directly with the company. No one provided a contract or any documents, which is why I wanted to quit so badly. I needed proof of employment or income to get a loan to buy a car and they couldn’t give it to me.
The agency business is suspicious. Some agencies are trying to compete with others to get more workers so they can get more money. From my second week working for them, I knew something wasn’t right. They call you an employee, but they can’t give you proof of employment. That’s not fair. I’ve even heard scary stories, like people getting shot in this business.
Christopher Rufo for Substack: You must be referring to the murder of Boyke Budiarachman two years ago, who was allegedly killed by a hitman hired by his competitor, Keven Van Lam. The motive for the crime appears to be business rivalry, following Budiarachman’s sale of his staffing company that supplied workers to Fourth Street Foods.
Rene: Yes, I had heard that but didn’t know the names. Fourth Street used to hire workers under the table, but the authorities cracked down on that. Now you need a work card and Social Security number. I tried to work for them before I had my work card, but they wouldn’t let me (Fourth Street Foods denies having hired workers under-the-table.).
Christopher Rufo for Substack: And after you left Fourth Street Foods, where did you go?
Rene: I work at an Amazon warehouse now, making $19.25 an hour. When I started earning more, I informed the public benefit office and stopped receiving government assistance.
I’m in a three-bedroom apartment with five people, including my cousin. Rent is around $800 to $850, not including utilities.
It was harsh in Haiti. There’s a lot of crazy stuff that happened. The gang stuff. A lot of madness. I had never thought about leaving Haiti, but since all the crazy stuff started happening there, I changed my mind. As a truck driver, I was making good money by Haitian standards, but the insecurity made me leave. It’s much better here.
I’m only here for two years. I don’t know if the program I’m in will get renewed. But for now, I know I’m here for two years.
Christopher Rufo for Substack: Some people in Charleroi have expressed concerns that many recent Haitian migrants are not interested in assimilating. What is your perspective on that?
Rene: Some Haitians are acting bad or weird. Some Haitians that came here were from the countryside. There is a lot of things about living in the city they’re not too familiar with. It’s a big cultural change.
I can say that I’m a little educated but most of the other Haitians aren’t, especially the ones that came from Chile or Brazil and had to walk through 13 or 14 South American countries to come here. They’re all “country” and don’t trust white people because they say white people are racist and don’t like them. They don’t want to talk to white people. I’ve seen people work at Fourth Street for two years and still not speak English or understand the traffic signs and traffic laws. Many Haitians fail their driver’s test here. Some of them blame racism for why they keep failing their driving test. So they go to Florida to get their driver’s license. Maybe it’s easier to get in Florida than here.
I’m not mad at Americans. I’m frustrated with myself, my people, my government, and our politicians.
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Why are Middle American families producing monsters?
In the 1960s and 1970s, America witnessed a wave of political terrorism. Left-wing radicals hijacked airplanes, set bombs in government buildings, and assassinated police officers in service of political goals. The perpetrators were almost always organized, belonging to groups like the Weathermen or the Black Liberation Army. These groups demanded the release of prisoners, denounced capitalism, or called for violent revolution against the United States. Their members were radical but largely lucid, justifying their actions with appeals to a higher cause.
In recent years, a new form of terror has emerged: decentralized, digitally driven violence organized not around coherent ideologies but around memes, fantasies, and nihilistic impulses. The perpetrators of this low-grade terror campaign do not belong to hierarchical organizations or pursue concrete political aims. More often, they come from ordinary families and lash out in acts of violence without discernible purpose.
At the close of this summer, two such incidents underscored the trend: the attack on schoolchildren at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk in Orem, Utah. Though the first resembled the school-shooter archetype and the second evoked a JFK-style political assassination, both share psychological and sociological roots that make them more alike than they initially appear.
The new terror campaign is defined by a particular kind of psychopathology. It is perhaps tautological that anyone willing to kill innocent schoolchildren as they are praying or to assassinate a popular podcast host in broad daylight is pathological. But in these cases, both alleged killers—Robin Westman (formerly Robert Westman), and Tyler Robinson—left behind several warning signs that were psychological in nature.
Westman, the alleged Annunciation shooter, left a diary detailing fantasies and inner turmoil related to his transgender identity. While he decorated his weapons with pithy slogans, including “Kill Donald Trump,” “Burn Israel,” and “Nuke India,” these were memes and ironies, designed to give the appearance of ideology, concealing a potentially more disturbing motive. He was in the throes of a transgender identity crisis and had fantasized about being a demon and wanting to watch children suffer. The ideology was a brittle shell around a deeper emptiness that could only be satisfied with horror.
Robinson, Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin, reportedly spent thousands of hours playing video games, had an account on sexual fetish websites, and played a “dating simulator” game involving “furries,” muscular cartoon characters that are half-animal and half-man. Officials claim that Robinson had moved in with a boyfriend who identified as transgender and to whom he confessed the crime. Like Westman, Robinson inscribed slogans on the shell casings he used in the assassination, including a message about noticing the “bulge” of male genitalia through women’s clothing. The fact that Robinson waited until Kirk began to answer a question about transgender mass shootings seems to reinforce the point.
In addition to their shared fixation with transgenderism, both Westman and Robinson immersed themselves in peculiar digital subcultures. These online spaces were not hubs of Marxism—or even transgenderism, strictly speaking—but of memes, attitudes, copycatting, in-jokes, and irony that, in certain cases, spilled over into violence. Both men allegedly acted out their fantasies not to advance a coherent ideology shaped by study or political organizing but to gratify an obscure personal urge.
In a note to his transgender boyfriend, Robinson wrote that he wanted to stop Charlie Kirk’s “hate.” While this may hint at a nascent ideology, the remark was perfunctory and incidental to the crime. Robinson did not seek to change policy or dismantle a system of government. He seems instead to have wanted to kill a man who spoke openly about transgenderism and embodied a vague notion of “hate.”
Another striking pattern in these crimes is that, at least from initial reporting, the alleged perpetrators came from ordinary, middle-class, Middle American families. Westman’s mother, for example, was active in her Catholic parish in Minneapolis. These were not visibly broken homes but functional households that nonetheless produced monsters—what we might call “radical normie terrorism.”
Radical normie terrorism poses a new challenge for law enforcement. As a veteran FBI agent told me, domestic law enforcement has no systematic program to identify, assess, and respond to this kind of online radicalization. The Bureau still relies on old-fashioned methods—processing tips, knocking on doors, interviewing witnesses—and, in most cases, cannot intervene against disturbed individuals until after they strike.
These acts of terror reflect something dark in our nation’s soul. The perpetrators were so dissatisfied with their middle-class lives that they sought to destroy the highest symbols of their society: murdering children in church pews, an attack on God; and murdering a political speaker in cold blood, an attack on the republic.
Stopping similar killers in the future will be a major challenge. The Internet is hard to police and culture hard to reform. But we should keep the stakes in mind as we work to protect the things we love and grapple for a solution, however elusive it may seem.
Invite your friends and earn rewards
He exposed the lies at the heart of radical left-wing ideologies—and paid the ultimate price for telling the truth.
Like almost everyone in my circle, I have spent the better part of the last week in a stupor. The news of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination has left all of us who counted him as a friend or colleague in a state of shock and sadness.
I did not know Charlie Kirk well. But I had met him in various green rooms, appeared on his radio program, and worked with him to find capable staffers for the Department of Education. He was always genuine, idealistic, and dedicated to the cause. I’m still astonished by all that he accomplished in such a short period of time. He built an enormous organization, turned himself into a media star, advised the president of the United States, and built a beautiful family—all by age 31.
When we are in the fray of day-to-day politics, it is easy to get consumed by each new headline and triviality. But Kirk’s death marks a pivotal moment, requiring deeper reflection. His life, and tragically his death, reveal some profound truths about the man and about America.
First and foremost, Charlie Kirk did it all the right way. He was a conservative willing to wade into controversial territory. But he was always guided by the idea that debate is the great clarifier and that, in a democratic society, persuasion is the primary means of political change. He set up tables on campus. He debated his opponents. And he believed he could win through the ballot box.
Kirk’s death, and the subsequent reaction to it by the radical Left, underscored the arguments he had made during his time on the stage. For nearly ten years, Kirk had argued that transgender ideology, especially when paired with experimental medical procedures, would result in disaster. From the reports now emerging, it appears likely that the alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, was radicalized online into anti-fascist and transgender politics. In their most extreme forms, both lines of thinking advocate a nihilistic embrace of violence—the antithesis of Kirk’s approach.
In fact, when he was murdered, Kirk was answering a question about the relationship between transgenderism and mass shootings, a phenomenon that seems to have accelerated in recent years. Kirk sought to engage his opponents in debate; his killer, quite possibly inspired by the trans-radical movement, sought to end that debate with a bullet.
The reaction to Kirk’s death by the mainstream Left has been equally troubling. Thousands of Americans, including students, professors, and even active-duty military members, have publicly cheered his assassination. Some have called for further violence against conservatives. Though I have covered left-wing radical movements for years, I was surprised by the number of people in the “helping professions,” including teachers and doctors, who embraced violent rhetoric.
How should conservatives respond? First, by drawing a line that Kirk himself exemplified: debate is healthy; violence is unacceptable. I’m glad to see that some institutions have terminated the employment of those who cheered on Kirk’s murder.
Contrary to the criticism that this represents a form of right-wing “cancel culture,” these firings were warranted. During the “woke” era, left-wing social media mobs sought the social annihilation of teenagers who sang rap lyrics and a Latino utility worker who cracked his knuckles the wrong way—examples of extreme and unjustified social policing. By contrast, a public school dismissing a teacher for applauding political assassination is a fair consequence.
All societies require boundaries. If there is no social sanction for celebrating violence, America will become a more dangerous place. Social trust, already fragile, will collapse.
On the question of transgender ideology, more information will emerge about Kirk’s alleged killer. But more than enough evidence already exists for federal law enforcement to consider radical transgender ideologues a threat to the civil order of the United States—much like white nationalists, neo-Nazis, militant “anti-fascists,” and other hateful groups. Some figures in the Trump administration, such as policy adviser Stephen Miller and Vice President J. D. Vance, have already indicated that they are ready to take action to enforce the law against violent movements.
Charlie Kirk sacrificed his life for truth. We should honor his legacy by standing firmly on principle, engaging in political debate, and, when necessary, enforcing the law against those who would organize violence in the name of politics.
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