Some residents of a Marshall County city are looking to form a non-profit to deal with what they say are problems resulting from exploitation of Haitian immigrant workers in north Alabama.

The group, “Concerned About Albertville,” sometimes referred to as “Concerned About Alabama,” grew out of a series of community meetings in Albertville churches earlier this month.

Gerilynn Hanson is an electrical contractor in the area. Her nephew, Jeff Lamour, is a businessman and a Haitian immigrant who has lived in Albertville for several years. They say Haitians who have come to north Alabama are being exploited for labor and forced to live in inhumane conditions.

At the last community meeting, volunteer sheets were left for attendees to sign.

The idea, Hanson said, is to use individual expertise to help fill needs. For example, retired educators might be able to help with English as a second language training, she said. In other cases, it may be to coordinate housing needs.

“There’s several different dynamics going on, and everybody has their own expertise,” she said.

The community meetings began in response to photographs of people entering and exiting charter buses in Albertville, which were shared on Facebook, with users questioning what purpose the buses served, who was on them, and where they were coming from.

Pilgrim’s Pride later issued statements saying it had chartered the buses for employees to and from its Russellville plant. The company then said it would no longer use charters. But discussion on social media and at meetings centered around recent Haitian immigration and its impact on the city.

Lamour said he was upset by the initial tone of the furor over the buses, but that many in Albertville were motivated by something more than fear and mistrust of immigrants.

“At first, I thought it would be something against Haitians,” he said. “The way they started out, it wasn’t good. But their motive is different. We’ve got local pastors working with them. And it seems like they are working with the local community. It sounds like they’re trying to do the right thing, fighting human and labor trafficking.”

Hanson and Lamour, as well as other residents, say many Haitians are living in substandard housing, and are being exploiting by immigration sponsors even as they have fled the political turmoil in their homeland.

In June, the Biden administration announced a new temporary protected status for Haitians who arrived in the U.S. on or before June 3, to shield even those who entered the country illegally from being deported back to Haiti, according to NBC News.

Immigration advocates estimate the number of Haitians in the U.S. with protected status is roughly 500,000.

Haiti has seen political unrest for years, as the country has not fully recovered from a 2010 catastrophic earthquake, and has not held elections since 2016.

In March, criminal organizations on the Caribbean island organized a jailbreak of more than 4,000 inmates. More than 2,500 people died there from January thru March. The unrest kept the country’s prime minister from returning from abroad, with him eventually resigning.

Gross National Income per capita in Haiti is $1,730, and a quarter of the island’s population lives in extreme poverty on less than $1.25 per day.

A Haitian can apply as a refugee, i.e., a person with “well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group, who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence.” However, the process to apply for refugee status can take up to two years.

”At the end of the day, most of the people are fleeing Haiti due to gangs,” Lamour said. “But it seems like everybody is wanting to use these people for their own benefit.”

Hanson said some immigrants may not know what kind of aid they can receive from the federal government, while others are afraid to report substandard housing for fear of being deported.

“There’s all kinds of needs,” she said. “Just pick one.”