Observing the due process violations that many Haitian refugees faced in the 1970s, Jean-Juste founded the Miami-based Haitian Refugee Center to assist them. He would supervise the organization from 1977 to 1990. A major point of his advocacy was to change to the U.S.'s differing treatment of Cuban and Haitian refugees; Jean-Juste argued that while the former were treated as political and granted asylum accordingly, the latter were almost always viewed as economic refugees, despite having fled the dictatorship of Duvalier.