Christopher F. Rufo

and

Christina Buttons

“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.

 Christopher F. Rufo

Fact Checking the Fact Checkers

Monday, CBS News published a story attempting to contradict our reporting on cat-eating in Dayton, Ohio. I published a rebuttal to the story on the social media site X, which I have reproduced here.

CBS News has published a response to the “Cat Eaters of Ohio” story. It’s a supremely dishonest and completely partisan report, but let’s break it down, to show exactly how the establishment media maintains its lines of propaganda.

The CBS report hinges on two arguments. First, CBS writes: “The video shows what appears to be animal carcasses on a grill. The man filming the footage alleges, without evidence, that they are cats.” Without evidence? The eyewitness directly observed the incident and took a video recording of it—both of which are firsthand evidence. But CBS’s apparent standard, when such evidence violates the establishment narrative, is: Don’t believe your lying eyes.

The report also quotes Dayton’s Democratic mayor, who says there have been “absolutely zero reports of this type of activity.” Which is true, but does not contradict the evidence at all. Nobody filed a police report, so there would be no police report—and the absence of a police report does not mean that something did not happen. This is a convenient way of ignoring the evidence, and laundering lies through friendly media apparatus.

What did CBS not do? Journalism. The network, which has massive resources, did not send a reporter to the scene, interview the eyewitness, interview the neighbors, investigate the visual evidence, conduct background research, or provide a detailed analysis. They simply adopted “don’t believe your lying eyes” as their standard and repeated an empty, evidence-free statement from a partisan political figure. Now, I’d like to take you through exactly how we produced the story and analyzed the evidence. This is precisely the case that I made in the original piece, that the establishment media is more interested in denial and obfuscation, even when the evidence points the other way.

Sourcing

An individual in my personal social network reached out with a tip and a link to the social media post with the video. (This source neither requested, nor received, the monetary prize I had posted on social media a few days prior.) Our team then collected the timestamped social media from August 2023, which was still live. We tracked down the author, authenticated the video, matched it to his voice, and conducted an interview by phone, in which he confirmed the key details of the story.

The following day, we had the author bring us to the location and make introductions, had a team member conduct background research, and sent a reporter into the field to make observations and conduct interviews. To confirm the exact location of the video, we matched the visual elements in the picture to the visual elements on the scene, down to matching knot patterns in fence planks, which provided us with the precise address and camera position relative to the scene. For extra care, we also cross-referenced the visual evidence with street and satellite images, plus residential property records.

Eyewitness Account

Our interview with the eyewitness matched the details of the original video and was unambiguous in its conclusion: “This African dude next door had the damn cat on the grill. They was barbecuing the damn cat!” The eyewitness was familiar with the African families in the housing complex (his son played with their children) and his child’s mother, who lived next door to the Africans, had observed them on at least one occasion butchering a large mammal on the street. The eyewitness had a close, unmediated look at the incident and maintained a consistent story over one year, to multiple different groups, including his own peer group. He is familiar with barbecuing and, like anyone, is familiar with cats. The source of his initial shock was that the animal on the grill was not a chicken, burger, hotdog, or other usual fare.

Again, he witnessed the incident firsthand, recorded a video, and maintained a consistent story over a year. This is all direct evidence, contrary to CBS News’s disingenuous claim.

Field Interviews

Our field reporter spoke with a half-dozen people in the housing complex, who confirmed the following details: all of the residents of the complex were migrants from Africa, most commonly the Congo; they were familiar with the eyewitness, his child’s mother, and his son; they told us another African family had recently moved out of one of the units; this family owned and used a blue grill; the father would go out with a knife and gather meat; there were stray cats breeding on the property and some residents wanted to get rid of them.

We also made the following direct observations on the scene: we matched the visuals in the video to the location; we found an abandoned grill that matched the make, model, and color in the video and the descriptions in the interviews; we noticed that there were at least ten cats on the property, which appeared to be strays and were very comfortable with the residents, coming onto the porches and milling around the exterior of the house.

Background Research

Our research team learned that there is a tradition of cat eating in the Congo and surrounding nations. We also learned that, since at least 2021, Dayton has accommodated a relatively large number of migrants from the Congo. By chance, one of our in-house researchers had experience dissecting cats and studying their anatomy. In addition, we spoke on background with a chicken farmer, surgeon, biologist, hunter, and medical professor.

Forensic Analysis

Over the weekend, some left-wing conspiracy accounts on social media began claiming that the animals were chickens, rather than cats. We asked our experts to provide forensic analysis and their opinion.

The chicken farmer, who has processed thousands of animals per year, confirmed that it could not be a chicken in the video:

• “The most obvious evidence is that the claws on the grill are facing the wrong way for it to be an avian creature. Size-wise the only poultry [the claws] could credibly be compared to is a Cornish game hen or something small, but the carcasses are much larger than that. Literally any poultry farmer or butcher would tell you that’s not a chicken or a waterfowl.
• “A bird wouldn’t be able to rest upside down like that. Its heavy legs would cause it to flop to one side or another, or the legs would just drop down to either side … There’s no way for a bird to naturally sit that way. They’re bottom-heavy creatures.”
• “The legs are too skinny [to be a chicken]. The ‘drumstick’ even on a laying hen would be much meatier. Number two is that, even if it were a bird, the talons are facing in the wrong direction. But they are in the right direction for cat’s paws. They are basically claiming that the two legs on the left are those of a chicken, and that its butt is somehow propped in the air. First of all, why would it be propped in the air? … But more importantly, why would the drumsticks be stuck up in midair? For a quadruped like a feline this makes sense (they are the front legs) but not an avian creature which has one set of legs with a sort of folding joint in them. If the bird were face up as they are claiming, the legs would fold down onto the thighs, not project straight into the air.”
• “The feet of a chicken or a waterfowl are much larger in proportion to the carcass than what’s in the video. Whereas the proportion fits that between a cat’s leg and paw. When you shoot a cow or sheep or pig, they might fall and roll onto their back with their legs straight up in the air like the cat is. Because they’re also quadrupeds. Not possible with a chicken because it just has a totally different leg structure. Made to do different things.”

We also spoke with a surgeon, who also has practical experience with animals, explained that the proportions of the animal, particularly the “ilium-to-scapula distance,” resemble a mammal, more specifically, a cat, rather than a chicken:

• “It’s fascinating how different animal species have remarkably similar skeletal structures – the humerus is proximal to the radius, the sternum anterior to the scapula – but the relationship of those bones to each other is what largely differentiates one animal species to the next, not only in appearance but also in function.”
• “[In the video,] you can see that a cat has a greater distance between the scapula and the ilium. This provides more space for the abdominal organs (i.e. small bowel, liver) between the thoracic cavity and the pelvis. When the legs are stretched, a 90-degree angle is formed between the legs and the pelvis/abdominal cavity (as can be seen in the picture).”
• “In contrast, a chicken has a very short distance between the scapula and the ilium. The reason for this is that the abdominal organs are located more caudally (i.e. towards the tail). When a chicken’s legs are stretched, this exaggerated 90-degree angle (as is seen in the video) is absent because the thoracic cavity is so close to the pelvis – hence, short distance between the scapula and ilium.”
• “The animals in the video are cats and not chickens due to the pronounced right angle between the legs and the abdomen that occur as a result of a longer ilium-to-scapula distance.”

Conclusion

The CBS News report is not credible and does not make any attempt to investigate the facts. Rather, it simply denied the eyewitness account and firsthand video as “without evidence”—a logical contradiction—and copied a statement from the Democratic mayor, who also did not investigate the matter. There is no indication that CBS sent a reporter into the field, conducted any interviews, or provided any visual analysis. There is no indication that CBS even knows where the incident occurred, something that took our team some time on the ground.

As I wrote in my original piece about the story, the establishment media wants to maintain a line of propaganda and wish away any evidence to the contrary, appealing to authority rather than the facts. This is dishonest and does a disservice to productive debate.