The Errand You Asked Someone to Run

Most of what this page publishes about Haiti is not really about Haiti. It is about an errand.

Someone here picks up a phone and asks a cousin, a mother, a church friend to do one small thing: go to the office and get the paper. Go to the counter and see if the money came. Go and find out whether the hospital is open. The person at the other end says yes, and then has to walk into a building that may or may not be working that day.

This week several of those buildings had a bad week at once. None of it changes anything about anyone’s immigration status in the United States — and that is not a throwaway line, it is the most important sentence in this article. But if you are the person making the phone call, the state of those counters is worth knowing before you ask someone to cross a city for you.

The water office at Delmas 34

On Wednesday, Nov. 4, workers burned tyres outside the offices of DINEPA, Haiti’s national drinking-water and sanitation authority, at Delmas 34. This page reported that the same day, from a Vant Bèf Info report: the newsroom said the movement was over pay and that the employees concerned said they had not been paid. DINEPA’s communications officer, Luckenson Auguste, told the newsroom by telephone that the accounting department had deposited pay into employees’ accounts on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Late that same day the institution answered in writing, and that note is new today. Two arms of DINEPA — the CTE-RMPP and OREPA-Ouest — condemned what they called conduct that disturbed public order, said they dissociate themselves from it, rejected the claims of salary arrears, and said the whole staff had been paid up to Oct. 15, 2026. They announced administrative measures against the agents involved, and asked the police authorities to act against anyone responsible for disturbances on the public road.

Read those two institutional statements side by side. On Nov. 4 a spokesman said pay went into accounts on Nov. 3. On Nov. 4 a written note said staff were paid up to Oct. 15. They came from the same institution on the same day. This page is printing both and reconciling neither, because no payroll record has been published and this page has seen none. Do not add them together, and do not let anyone tell you what the gap between them means.

What the note does not say is the part that matters for an errand: it does not say whether the Delmas 34 office is open, how many staff the sanctions reach, or anything at all about the road. A note announcing sanctions and calling for police is not notice that an office is closed, and it is not notice that it is open.

If you were going to ask someone to collect a document there, have them telephone first, and ask on the day how the road is.

The counter where the money lands

A large employer stopping is the other half of this. On Nov. 4 the Brasserie nationale d’Haïti — BRANA, a Heineken subsidiary — suspended operations and told staff to stay home; the feed entry for that day carries it in full. When a wage stops in a house in Haiti, the person asked to make up the difference is usually the person reading this page, and that pressure is exactly what scams are built on. Nobody may charge you a fee to “sign you up” for anything, in either country, and no fee has ever made a work permit come back.

The route the money travels has also been unreliable for weeks, and this page has published each piece of that at its own date.

On Oct. 21 this page reported that Capital Bank had reopened 17 of its 27 branches in Haiti, with online banking still down. On Oct. 30 it reported Digicel Haïti’s own statement that it records on average about twenty cuts to its fibre-optic links every week, in a context of insecurity, and that it had asked the authorities to protect telecoms infrastructure. None of that says a transfer has failed, and none of it says one has arrived.

So the instruction this page has given before still holds, and it is the cheapest protection there is: write down the date, the amount and the reference number of every transfer you send, and keep your own copy. If you cannot reach someone, a dead line can be the network rather than the person. Keep trying, and ask a neighbour or a church to check in person before you assume the worst — or send again.

And before you accept a rate at a counter, the central bank publishes the official one free every working day on brh.ht; the Oct. 30 entry on this page explains how to read it.

The papers, and the law that changes on January 1

Verified today: Haiti’s new Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure take effect on Jan. 1, 2027. Le Nouvelliste reported on Nov. 4 that the Ministère de la Justice et de la Sécurité publique launched a national programme on Nov. 3 to train judicial actors on the two new texts, as part of the preparations for them entering into force.

This page has not seen the text of either code and is not describing what is in them. No readable list of what changes has been published here, and nothing read says what happens to a case already under way on Dec. 31. Do not assume anything gets easier or harder that day.

It is in this article because some households reading this have a relative with a case, a detention or a complaint in the Haitian courts. For them the date is a planning fact and nothing more, and the person to ask is a lawyer in Haiti, before January, with one plain question: does this change anything about their case.

And the boundary, because it is the whole point: this is Haitian criminal law. It is not United States immigration law. No Haitian code decides who may stay in the United States.

What has not changed here

TPS for Haiti and Syria is terminated, effective July 27, 2026, and those work permits expired the same day. Nothing this week moved it. Democrats won both houses of Congress on Nov. 3, and this page said at the time what it says now: the new Congress is not seated until January, and an election does not undo a published notice. Checked again today, the Federal Register carries no TPS notice of any kind for any country, and nothing was filed at all by DHS, USCIS, CBP, State or the immigration courts on the day’s public-inspection list.

Losing TPS is still not a judge ordering you personally to leave, and most people who lost it have no such order. But if a judge has already ordered your removal, that order did not go away, and you should see a lawyer this week.

If you want to check your own situation rather than take anyone’s word for it, the immigration court’s automated line is free: 1-800-898-7180, available at any hour, in English and Spanish only. It will tell you your next hearing date and whether a judge has decided your case, from your A-number. If you have never had an immigration court case, you will find nothing there, and that is not bad news.

What each household can finish this week

Pick the ones that apply and finish them. None needs anyone’s permission.

• Before you ask anyone in Haiti to run an errand, have them telephone the office first and ask that day about the road. A newspaper report from Wednesday morning is not the state of a street on Friday.
• Photograph every document you hold — passport, birth certificate, any notice with a number on it — and leave a copy with someone you trust here. Keep your own records has the list.
• Write down your A-number and give it to one person in your household who is not you, along with the detainee locator instructions, so somebody can look for you without starting from nothing.
• Agree the plan for the children now, while nobody is under pressure: who collects them, who may speak for them, and where the paperwork lives. A U.S.-citizen child cannot be deported, but a parent facing removal may have to decide quickly whether the child goes, and that is not a decision to make in a corridor.
• Read the door script once, out loud, with whoever answers your door. Know your rights has it, and the one line worth memorising is that you do not have to open the door unless they show you a warrant signed by a judge, held up to the window where you can read the name on it.
• If ICE comes to your street, write the date, the time and the exact place, and report what you saw. Give it to a lawyer rather than only posting it.
• If you need a lawyer and cannot pay, start at free legal help. Lead with what help cannot do: nobody can restore a terminated designation. What they can do is read your own papers and tell you which of the narrow doors, if any, is yours.

None of this is a prediction about you. It is the set of things that are still entirely within one household’s control on a week when a lot of counters, in two countries, were not.