A WARM EMBRACE FROM THE MAN IN CLOTH
An immigrant himself, Pastor Keke is a one-person welcoming center helping Haitians find their feet in their new land
It was just past 8:30 a.m. when a family of four exited the Roxbury recreation center where they’ve been living temporarily. The father, in a bright red beanie, pushed a stroller with his 3-year-old daughter nestled inside. He, his wife, and teenage son were bundled in black parkas and scarves, braced against the unfamiliar cold.
But their faces brightened immediately at the sound of a friendly greeting, called out in their native Haitian Creole.
The man who hailed them is Pastor Dieufort Fleurissaint, but everyone calls him by his nickname — Pastor Keke (pronounced KEE-kee). He approached the family to introduce himself. Do they need help applying for work authorization? Are they interested in English classes?
Would they want to attend a church service he’s organizing for those at the Roxbury shelter this Sunday?
With Pastor Keke, no one is a stranger for long. He handed them his business card, one of roughly a thousand he gives away each month. On it: contact information for his church and nonprofit; right in the middle, in a larger font, his personal cellphone number.
For many, those 10 digits are a lifeline.
As thousands of fellow Haitians flee the escalating humanitarian crisis gripping the Caribbean nation, Pastor Keke, 62, has lost count of the number of phone calls he’s received from new arrivals seeking help.
“It’s been constant,” he said. “They come on a daily basis, it doesn’t matter what time it is, day or night.”
Calls come from families who’ve just arrived at Logan Airport, desperate for a safe place to sleep. Others need help accessing Mass-Health benefits, or finding jobs that align with their professional training. Sometimes, Haitian immigrants call him before they’ve reached Massachusetts,
dialing his number — which they’ve gotten from shelter volunteers or through word of mouth — from San Antonio or Del Rio, Texas.
The flood of people arriving in the United States from Haiti shows no signs of abating as his home country grows dangerously close to collapse. Massachusetts has a long-established Haitian community, with the third-largest Haitian population in the country; according to state data, which is likely incomplete, 72 percent of recent new arrivals to the state have come here from Haiti.
But as the immigrating families flee one crisis, they find themselves part of another, as Massachusetts experiences an unprecedented wave of people seeking refuge from political upheaval, economic turmoil, and violence in Haiti and elsewhere. These new arrivals have pushed the state’s shelter system far past its capacity and spread resettlement resources too thin to meet the need.
Pastor Keke, who immigrated to the US in 1981 at age 20 and sees himself in each arriving immigrant, said he is doing his best to fill the gaps.
“We have never seen anything like this,” he said. “No one was prepared for it.”
Leveraging decades of connections and his prominent position in Greater Boston’s Haitian American community, he is an essential conduit in the network of state agencies, nonprofits, and community groups all working together to support newly arrived families.
His work has included coordinating donations for emergency shelters, recruiting translators, and connecting arriving migrants with services such as English classes. All the while, he’s continued his decades-long advocacy on the local, state, and federal level, in the hope of making Massachusetts an even more welcoming place for immigrants than it was when he first arrived nearly 40 years ago.
His days start at 5 a.m. and often don’t end until 1 a.m. But, driven by his faith and a lifelong commitment to help those in need, he said he has never doubted it’s work he was meant to do.
Just this past week, Pastor Keke stood at the center of a resources fair for newly arrived migrants, a conductor directing organized chaos — answering questions, flagging down volunteers, directing people to this table or that for job information, legal assistance, school registration — a cacophony of hundreds of voices echoing around him. He was wearing his personalized orange-and-black sneakers, a must for when he knows he’ll be on his feet all day, and he was invariably surrounded by people, all vying for his attention. The phone in his hand lit up nearly nonstop with incoming calls.
Ernest Jean Pierre, a 40-year-old migrant from Haiti, waited patiently for his turn to speak to the pastor. Which of these job openings at Goodwill would be a good fit for him? What should he do about his expired work authorization?
“Everywhere I go, I find Pastor Keke in my way to help!” Jean Pierre told him in Haitian Creole.
“God gave me that mission to help, so I am pleased to do so,” Pastor Keke responded, laughing.
Hours later, Jean Pierre waved to Pastor Keke as he left the fair.
“I will call you for more information!” he called out.
“You need to come to my church!” Pastor Keke joked.
“I’ll visit!” Jean Pierre responded, a bright grin on his face.
“Pastor Keke serves as a light,” he told the Globe later. “With Pastor Keke in the community — everything is impossible, but he makes it possible.”
Pastor Keke has long been there to help meet the immediate needs of arriving families, said Ronnie Millar, director of strategic initiatives at the state’s Office for Refugees and Immigrants, no matter how short the notice.
Last year, when Governor Maura Healey deployed the National Guard to help staff the state’s emergency shelters, Pastor Keke recruited dozens of Haitian pastors around the state to be there when the troops arrived, Millar said. Pastor Keke’s volunteers translated for the shelter residents and provided a comforting presence for families who may otherwise have been frightened by the presence of uniformed military personnel, Millar said.
“He makes [the transition] so smooth and gentle for families,” Millar said. “They totally trust him, and we totally trust him.”
Pastor Keke knows their struggle intimately.
He arrived in New York from Haiti in 1981 on a tourist visa — his pastor helped him get it — looking for more lucrative work and the opportunity, he says, to make a difference. Having grown up in a house without electricity, he remembers the bright lights and how gigantic the city seemed.
But within a year, he ended up homeless due to his lack of legal status and spent months sleeping on the subway or on friends’ couches during the daylight hours when he wasn’t working. He didn’t have a problem working 12-, 14-, 15-hour shifts.
He moved to Massachusetts in 1985, took computer classes at a community college one night a week, and worked multiple jobs to support his wife and young children and also send money back to family in Haiti. Soon, he
‘They are assets; they are not liabilities to this country.’
PASTOR KEKE on the newly arrived immigrants. He’s shown greeting Inika Vimal of Health Care for All
gained legal status via the 1986 immigration law signed by then-President Reagan, which provided amnesty to immigrants in the country without legal status who’d arrived before 1982.
He earned an associate’s degree in accounting and another in business administration, started a business, and volunteered as a church youth leader. Then in 2002, he was recruited by Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, a social advocacy group, and became an organizer and leader, connecting immigrant communities with resources and pushing lawmakers at the State House to tackle housing and health care affordability.
He also started his own church, Total Health Christian Ministries in Mattapan, and, after the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, founded True Alliance Center, a religious nonprofit that provides resources and advocates for the Haitian community. He does his current work through those organizations, and other groups with which he is affiliated.
His memories of his own arrival in the US are front of mind these days.
“We have seen an influx of new families arriving who definitely have no family ties to the state, so these people are at the mercy of social organizations,” said Pastor Keke. “They were ending up in the emergency rooms at Boston Medical Center, Mass General Hospital, also children’s hospitals. We received calls from those centers asking, ‘What do we do with them?’ We’ve never had that.”
On another recent day, it was dark outside when Pastor Keke arrived at the Norwood Church of God, one of the many churches across the state with which he works. More than 50 newly arrived Haitian men and women were bent over packets of exercises for the evening’s English lesson.
At one table, a volunteer taught a small group how to say numbers one through 30. Down the hall, another beginner class worked on vocabulary words.
Though the Haitian church has hosted English classes for years, enrollment has skyrocketed since Pastor Keke began connecting the church’s leadership with migrants staying at shelters in towns such as Plainville and Stoughton. He hopes to connect them with job training opportunities, financial literacy seminars, and computer classes.
“They’ve been blessed to be here ... but at the same time, also [I want them to] really understand while they have that opportunity, [they need] to seize that opportunity,” he said, often sharing his own story to give new arrivals hope. “They are assets; they are not liabilities to this country.”
Pastor Keke’s advocacy long predates the current crisis. He has helped, repeatedly, to lobby federal authorities to keep Haitians covered by so-called temporary protected status, which allows them to legally live and work in the country. And in 2022, he helped persuade Massachusetts lawmakers to override then-Governor Charlie Baker’s veto of legislation to allow people without legal immigration status to obtain driver’s licenses.
By the time Pastor Keke leaves the Norwood Church of God for Stoughton, where he lives with his wife and the youngest of his six adult children, he’s running late, as he often is.
To him though, the extra time he spends to help one more person, answer one more question, is worth it. Tonight he used it to share details with a group of migrant parents about a tax credit for which they could be eligible.
He’s still on church property when he gets a series of texts from a man he met recently, who worked in Haiti as an engineer and has experience installing solar panels. Does Pastor Keke know who can help him find a job?
Pastor Keke texts back a link to a workforce development nonprofit working to connect migrants with jobs.
“That’s what faith is all about,” he said. “The reality of things hoped for, and the unseen things that will be coming — brighter days ahead.”