Haitian migrants face mass deportation as the US ends legal protections
Haitian migrants risk deportation from America after the Trump Administration terminated their temporary legal protections. On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security that it is terminating legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians, setting them up for potential deportation. DHS said that conditions in Haiti have improved and Haitians no longer meet the conditions for the temporary legal protections.
'This decision restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that Temporary Protective Status is actually temporary,' a DHS spokesperson said. 'The environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home.' The Department of State, however, has not changed its travel advisory and still recommends Americans 'do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime , civil unrest, and limited health care.'
'The decision today will leave returning Haitian citizens at very high risk of persecution, danger, homelessness. People have nowhere to go,' Pastor Dieufort Fleurissaint, of Boston, told The Boston Globe . 'You have a humanitarian collapse... The only hope we have is God. God and to call upon our friends and allies, elected officials, to advocate on our behalf, so these families can be protected and find a way to enact permanent solutions.' He told the outlet that migrants have been calling him left and right since the news dropped as they are now unsure what their and their children's futures look like and their employment.
Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley condemned DHS, writing on Bluesky: 'We should NOT be deporting anyone to a nation still dealing with a grave humanitarian crisis like Haiti.' Heather Yountz, senior immigration staff attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, said the Trump Administration was revoking Haitian's protect 'simply to fulfill the harmful mass deportation he promised,' she told The Boston Globe. Haitian migrants who are in the US under a temporary protection status (TPS) will have to leave by September 2. The program ends on August 3, but it doesn't go into effect for a month. DHS advised TPS holders to return to Haiti using a mobile application called CBP Home. The majority of Haitian migrants live in Massachusetts and Florida.
Gang violence has displaced 1.3million people across Haiti as the local government and international community struggle to contain an spiraling crisis, according to a recent report from the International Organization for Migration. The report warned of a 24 percent increase in displaced people since December, with gunmen having chased 11 percent of Haiti's nearly 12million inhabitants from their home. 'Deporting people back to these conditions is a death sentence for many, stripping them of their fundamental right to safety and dignity' Tessa Pettit, a Haitian-American who is executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, told AP.
Frantz Desir, 36, has been in the US since 2022 on asylum, but he says he is concerned by the Trump administration's decision to terminate their protections. 'You see your friends who used to go to work every day, and suddenly - without being sick or fired - they just can't go anymore. It hits you. Even if it hasn't happened to you yet, you start to worry: "What if it's me next?"' he told AP.
Desir says his asylum court date was set for this year, but the judge rescheduled it for 2028. Desir lives in Springfield, Ohio, with his wife and two children, and he works in a car parts manufacturing plant. The US has also banned all flights to Port-au-Prince, the nation's capital, until September.
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