Jason, owner of Chateau Floral Shop, Darlington, WI

New Yorker Frantz Fils-Aime was placed in a jail cell in Petionville with four other deportees after arriving in Haiti on Aug. 9.

Samuel Lizius, a deportee who arrived in January from Fort Worth, Texas, reads a copy of his deportation order outside his Port-au-Prince home.

Merissier stands outside her Key West home with the fiancée of her son Wilfrantz Casseus and two of his children.

Eduardo Dorantes, Darlington, WI student and dairy worker

An immigrant Dairy worker in his Darlingotn, WI home

Vilmeus lives with her four children in a small shack in Port-au-Prince’s Fort National neighborhood.

Islande Vilmeus, 31, sits in front of her makeshift home with her her son Abraham, 2. Vilmeus’ school-age children are back in class thanks to President Michel Martelly’s education scholarship program.

Freguens Neise, 32, walks through rice patties and vegetable gardens near the village of Coupon. He says most Haitians prefer to buy American rice because it’s processed to remove the small rocks and dirt.

Photography

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The Relentless Rise of Two Caribbean Lakes Baffles Scientists

National Geographic

Jacob Kushner

In Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the lakes are flooding farmland, swallowing communities and leading to deforestation, baffling climate scientists.

Story and photos by Jacob Kushner for National Geographic

Jacob Kushner

Mystery of the rising Caribbean lakes

Christian Science Monitor

HISPANIOLA – On the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, home to the sovereign nations of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, two large lakes are rising dramatically.

Lake Azuéi in Haiti submerged an entire community; across the border in the Dominican Republic, Lake Enriquillo has risen nearly 33 feet in just 10 years. As their land flooded, many farmers began cut-ting down trees to make charcoal to earn a living, leading to deforestation.

Scientists from across the globe have tried to solve the mystery behind the rising lakes. Some think climate change is to blame, arguing that warming sea created more evaporation and clouds, which led to more rainfall. But if true, that would be strange, because in most of the world climate change is causing lakes to shrink.

The phenomenon is spur- ring calls for more research to help explain – and mitigate – the situation. Until scientists are able to identify the cause and work toward a solution, thousands of farmers on this Caribbean island will have to adapt.

This reporting was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Birthright Denied

Moment Magazine

Story and photos by Jacob Kushner

The campaign to expel the children of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic is impractical. Their labor—and that of their parents—helped propel the Dominican economy last year to grow faster than all but one other country’s in Latin America, firmly establishing it as a middle-class nation. They are a significant part of the workforce in the booming construction and tourism industries that have helped transform the Dominican Republic into the most popular travel destination in the Caribbean.

But in a chaotic democracy that has adopted 38 different constitutions over a century and a half, anti-Haitianismo is the one enduring notion that mainstream parties across the political spectrum can invoke with impunity. It is driven by the fervor of Dominican nationalists, and, in particular, by one powerful, ultra-conservative family and its allies. Together, they are waging a political, legal and media war to defend the Dominican Republic against what they believe is the nation’s gravest threat: Haitian immigrants and their children.

Read: Moment Magazine

VIDEO: Working Aboard Kenya’s Century-Old Train

GlobalPost/GroundTruth

Filmed and Produced by Jacob Kushner for GroundTruth

PHOTO: Last Train to Mombasa

Christian Science Monitor

Photos and story by Jacob Kushner for The Christian Science Monitor

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PHOTO: Congo’s subsistence miners

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From the book, China’s Congo Plan

PHOTO: “Tent Life”

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An IOM funded production and screening of short films in a Port-au-Prince IDP camp following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

PHOTO: Haitians face persecution across Dominican border

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Vehicles and merchants mingle as they hustle to transport rice, cement and other goods across the Jimani border on market day in which the border opens and anyone can cross.

A Haitian man rides atop a public tap-tap on route to the border at Jimani.

Photos and Story by Jacob Kushner for NACLA.

PHOTO: U.S. Deportees to Haiti, Jailed Without Cause, Face Severe Health Risks

Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

A flight carrying deportees from a Louisiana detention center arrives at Toussaint Louverture airport in Port-au-Prince on Sep. 13.

Deportees are unshackled by immigration agents before being transferred to the Haitian judicial police.

New Jersey deportee Valloton Vallon sits on a bus at the airport while he awaits fingerprinting shortly after arriving in Haiti on Aug. 9.

Longtime Fort Myers, FL resident Franco Coby looks out of the cell at the Petionville jail where he was held for seven days without charge. Coby was deported after serving a sentence for cocaine possession with intent to sell.

Celie Merissier, 52, peeks out the doorway of her Key West, Fla. home with the fiancee and children of her son Wilfrantz Casseus, who was deported to Hiati in August after being convicted of selling cocaine.

Story and Photography by Jacob Kushner for the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting and Type Investigations.

PHOTO: International Jazz Festival returns to Port-au-Prince

JazzTimes Magazine

The Port-au-Prince International Jazz Festival returned in February 2011 after it was canceled following Haiti’s devastating earthquake. Read the story Jazz Times Magazine.