Two courtrooms, one week, and one Boston federal judge who’s now freed two Haitian TPS holders from Plymouth County because ICE literally couldn’t show up with paperwork.

(You’d think showing up would be the easy part.)

We’ve got that story, plus a Cambridge housing specialist named Farah whose entire career just got frozen by a status she’s held for over a decade, and, good news, finally, Dr. Hal May, a Tuskegee Airman who spent years working in Haiti before building Codman Square’s health model, just turned 100.

Let’s go.

A Haitian TPS holder picked up at a routine ICE check-in spent time locked up in Plymouth County jail before a federal judge ordered him released because ICE had no legal basis to hold him.

This is the same judge’s second such ruling in seven days.

These aren’t people who skipped a hearing or ran from a warrant.

They’re doing exactly what they’re told, showing up to scheduled check-ins, and getting detained anyway, on the government’s own miscalculation.

Twice now, a Boston court has had to step in and say so, on the record.

This is happening in Plymouth County, not some detention center in a state you’ll never visit.

It’s forty minutes from Dedham.

That’s your commute.

Farah is a Cambridge nonprofit housing specialist.

She helps people with mental illness find care, pays her taxes, and financed her own college since TPS holders don’t qualify for federal aid.

Her work authorization was suspended this month after a federal ruling let Trump move forward with rescinding TPS.

She’s not alone.

Roughly 45,000 Haitians in Massachusetts hold this status, and DHS’s entire justification amounts to “temporary means temporary,” even as the State Department’s own travel advisory calls Haiti too dangerous to visit for any reason.

Farah’s mother, also a TPS holder, was suspended from her job at an emergency dental clinic the same week.

Two paychecks, gone, in one household, over one policy memo.

That’s a kitchen table conversation happening right now in Cambridge.

Dr. Hal May turned 100 this week.

Before he became the architect of Boston’s community medicine movement, the guy who built Codman Square Health Center’s whole systems-based approach, he spent years working in Haiti after training as a Tuskegee Airman and becoming Mass General’s first Black surgical resident.

He still doesn’t talk much about the Airman part.

He’d rather talk about FAMILY, the organization he built around one idea: treat everyone like they’re family, because we are.

A hundred years, and he’s still working the same thesis.

Your weekly map of what’s worth showing up for.

Rooftop party, Black-owned BBQ catering, proceeds going to Partners In Health. Bring your partner, bring an appetite.

Taught in Haitian Creole, with potential full scholarships. If you know someone eyeing a career change, this is the kind of thing that doesn’t get promoted enough.

A real Konpa/jazz night in Brockton’s Haitian hub. Mark the calendar now.

World premiere from Boston’s own Haitian-folkloric dance company. Tickets just went live. This is an early notice, so you don’t miss it this time.

Dr. May’s hundred years put the TPS stories in a different light this week: a man who spent his life building systems so people could be treated like family, while a federal court has to keep reminding ICE of the same basic idea.

If someone in your life needs to know what’s actually happening in Mattapan, Cambridge, and Codman Square right now, forward this.

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Mèsi anpil. See you next Thursday.

GUSTAVE • FOUNDER, SAK PASE BOSTON

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