Department of Homeland Security Ends Temporary Protected Status for Haitians in America

The move is set to put up to 500,000 Haitians at risk of deportation.

The Department of Homeland Security on Friday announced that it would terminate temporary protected status for Haiti, setting the groundwork for hundreds of thousands of Haitians to potentially be deported from the United States once the designation expires later this summer.

The termination of temporary protected status — a designation that shields from deportation people who have traveled to the U.S. from countries that are deemed unsafe because of natural disasters, armed conflict or other extraordinary conditions — would put up to 500,000 Haitians at risk of deportation, as gang violence continues to roil the country.

According to a DHS release, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “determined that conditions in Haiti no longer meet the TPS statutory requirements,” after concluding that conditions in the country have improved sufficiently for Haitians in the U.S. to return. The DHS plans to terminate the designation effective on Sept. 2.

“This decision restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that Temporary Protective Status is actually temporary,” an unnamed DHS spokesperson said in the release. “Haitian nationals may pursue lawful status through other immigration benefit requests, if eligible.”

But while DHS said Haiti is “safe for Haitian citizens to return home,” the country still remains at a “level four” designation by the State Department, which has advised Americans not to travel there due to risk of “kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and limited health care.”

Haiti was also included in President Donald Trump’s new travel ban.

Trump has threatened mass deportation for Haitians since his presidential campaign, when he began attacking Haitian immigrants, zeroing in on migrants in Springfield, Ohio, that he said were “destroying” the town’s “way of life.”

Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance at the time boosted conspiracy theories about Haitians in Springfield eating a slew of local wildlife, including cats, dogs and geese, sparking outcry from Democrats.

“It’s simply wrong,” then-President Joe Biden said of Trump and Vance’s comments, adding that the Haitian American community was “under attack.”

The decision is the latest in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration and follows a February move by the DHS rescinding temporary legal protections for Haitians in the U.S. that had been granted under the Biden administration, which cited at the time the dangerous conditions in Haiti that made their return unsafe.

The Trump administration has also made similar moves terminating protections for Afghans, Venezuelans and Cameroonians in the country, and won a legal battle in the Supreme Court in May after justices cleared the way for the administration to immediately end deportation protections for roughly 350,000 Venezuelans in the U.S.

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-- By Bronwyn A. Stone

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