Spokane churches, nonprofits support Haitian immigrants amid temporary protection status uncertainty

Maranatha Church, Jasmine Ministries and Creole Resources have served Spokane’s Haitian population for years – most recently by creating job and housing opportunities made scarce to them due to social and legal barriers created by the Trump administration.

Only a month ago, many Haitians in Spokane nearly saw the end of their Temporary Protected Status, leaving them with the choice to return to Haiti or find a new way to achieve legal status in the United States.

Even though a federal judge barred the expiration from taking effect, public uncertainty about the longevity of their TPS has made it hard for Haitians in the U.S. to do things like rent an apartment or apply for jobs.

“We had a lot of people, for eight or nine months, not working. That is not because they don’t want to work, they have paperwork looking for jobs, but they cannot find any job. Because you don’t know, one day, yes, TPS is good, the other day, TPS is not,” said Katia Jasmin, founder and executive director of Creole Resources.

Maranatha Evangelical Church

Luc Jasmin Jr., the pastor of Maranatha Evangelical Church and a citizen of both Haiti and the United States, said he gets calls about everything– things like solving a problem in the family or finding money for rent, acting as a trustworthy translator for a hospital visit and filling out an application form.

People call him over the phone or they find him at the Emmanuel Family Life Center, where he rents an office and a space for Maranatha Evangelical Church to worship.

“I’m there if they have a problem in the public, in the family, I’m there to make a call. Even if the problem is back home in Haiti, I call and help them handle it. If they need a place to stay, I find a place for them to stay,” Luc Jasmin Jr. said.

He started Maranatha Evangelical Church after serving for years at Calvary Baptist Church and becoming ordained.

“We started to have a few Haitians here, and when they were coming to the church, they didn’t understand, you know, you can’t worship in the language that you don’t understand. So I saw the need to have to start a little community prayer and stuff like that,” Luc Jasmin Jr. said.

Love and the spiritual world

“We should be making decisions according to the will of God. And God tells me to love you, and I want to obey that. I don’t question God. And this is what we do at the church,” Luc Jasmin Jr. said.

He said Jesus’s teachings to love God and love your neighbor are important to Maranatha and that the church provides a special place to focus the spiritual elements of these commands.

“I hear theology try to dissociate the spiritual to the material. To me, it’s one, because if the Spirit of God is not within you, you cannot love your neighbor as you love yourself,” Luc Jasmin Jr. said.

Involving the spiritual side of reality is also important for recognizing God’s ability to perform miracles in the world, he said.

“We pray because prayer is our contact with God. Prayer is how things happen miraculously. Yeah, because we do not live in the physical world only. There is a spiritual world and it’s well here with us,” he said.

Local Haitian ministries

In the last few years, Maranatha Evangelical Church became a community hub and a part of a local network of support groups and ministries for Haitian people in Spokane.

Jasmine Ministries, run by Luc Jasmine Jr., provides opportunities in Spokane like music lessons and a housing program. It also uses funds to support an orphanage in Haiti.

Luc Jasmine Jr. also started the orphanage in Haiti seven years ago. It now consists of two buildings and supports 40 kids that were on the streets in Haiti.

Creole Resources, founded in 2023 by Pastor Luc Jasmin Jr.’s daughter Katia Jasmin, also provides resources like English language classes, job training and housing assistance for Haitian people in Spokane.

“Where we come from, we’ve been through a lot, you know? We’ve been through a lot, and then coming to another country, don’t know the language, don’t know the people, and yeah. So that’s the main thing, to find help for my people,” Katia Jasmin said.

Jobs and legal assistance

Two main endeavors of Creole Resources are finding jobs for Haitian people and providing them legal support.

Many Haitians faced a more difficult time finding a job after Donald Trump spread disparaging lies about the Haitian community in Ohio, again when his administration pushed to remove their TPS and again when his administration stopped issuing visas to immigrants from Haiti, Katia Jasmin said.

“That’s when most of the people fire the Haitians. And since then they can be, you know, they are not able to find jobs,” she said.

She explained that Creole Resources aims to connect Haitians with jobs because working for money rather than accepting government handouts is important for Haitian culture.

“You don’t go and ask the government for money. If you do that, you cannot be on welfare. In my country that is bad,” she said. “They don’t, they don’t want people to give them. They want to be able to work to provide for themselves.”

Supporting legal services for immigrants is the other priority and an important way that people can support Creole Resources, Katia Jasmin said.

Financial support for professional legal help is important to avoid mistakes and negative results, she explained. However, a person with legal status accompanying immigrants to meetings can also help provide a sense of safety, she said.

Katia Jasmin said the most helpful thing for Haitians in Spokane would be to provide a clear pathway to stay legally.

“All we need is for them to open up the thing for us so we can be legal, so we can be able to work,” she explained. “And they say employers can still let people work, but they do not. They say they can, but they are not letting you work.”

This story was written in partnership with FāVS News, a nonprofit newsroom covering faith and values in the Inland Northwest.