JACKSONVILLE — A popular Haitian social media blogger and influencer who often riled people with his controversial posts has been arrested on immigration fraud, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Hervé Laplante, who boasts tens of thousands of followers on TikTok, is now in ICE custody. Earlier this month, Laplante showed up as an detainee inside the Baker Detention Center in Macclenny, Florida, after becoming the latest immigrant arrested as part of President Donald Trump’s mass crackdown against non-citizens.
In a statement to the Miami Herald, an ICE spokesperson said that Laplante, who lived in Montreal before moving to Jacksonville, “is an illegal alien from Haiti, [who] gained status in the United States fraudulently, as he was married with two women simultaneously.”
“It was determined that he is an illegally present alien who is inadmissible under the Immigration and Nationality Act who sought to procure a visa, or other documentation, allowing admission into the United States by fraud or by willfully misrepresenting a material fact,” the spokesman said. “He has a final order of removal issued by an immigration judge on Oct. 18, 2024.”
Born in Pétion-Ville, Laplante got his start working for several radio stations in Port-au-Prince before moving to Canada in 2008, according to an interview he once gave Le Nouvelliste, Haiti’s oldest daily. Eventually, he moved to Jacksonville, where in 2014 he registered the now inactive, LAPLANTASHOW & ENTERTAINMENT.
Known for his provocative jokes and sometimes angry posts targeting entertainers and other personalities in the Haitian sphere, Laplante once described himself as “a sensational journalist.”
In the Nouvelliste article, he said, he decide “to become a scandal or sensationalist journalist, because I realized that our industry is virgin in this sense. Since I am someone who dares to do and say things that people are afraid to do or say, I decided to add these little spices to the business!”
Because of his social media popularity, his arrest caught the Haitian community by surprise..
By JACQUELINE CHARLES/Miami Herald
Jacqueline Charles has reported on Haiti and the English-speaking Caribbean for the Miami Herald for over a decade. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for her coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, she was awarded a 2018 Maria Moors Cabot Prize — the most prestigious award for coverage of the Americas.
