IRIS helps immigrants with wrap-around services including legal representation. But Haitians, she said, face unique challenges from a lack of available staffers speaking Haitian Creole, to a relative lack of federal funds for legal aid compared to other nationalities. Many have arrived since 2021 after the country’s president was assassinated and a steady breakdown of public order since then, and long running economic inequality partly shaped by U.S. interference. Advocates are now looking to the federal government for help.