DHS Ends Temporary Immigration Protections for Haitians (1)

The Trump administration is terminating temporary deportation protections for Haitians in the US.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in an announcement Friday she would remove Temporary Protected Status for Haiti effective Sept. 2.

The TPS program allows immigrants from designated countries to stay in the US with legal work authorization for up to 18 months when circumstances like armed conflict and natural disasters prevent a safe return. Noem said the environmental situation in Haiti had improved enough to end the TPS designation.

DHS estimated in February that more than half a million Haitians in the US were eligible for TPS protections.

Noem announced the designation months after truncating a July 2024 Biden administration extension of TPS protections for the country, promising a “fresh review” of conditions there. In the announcement Friday, DHS didn’t address ongoing gang activity that was cited in the extension last year as a primary source of violence and instability.

“This decision restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that Temporary Protective Status is actually temporary,” Noem said.

Congressional Democrats in March warned Noem against removing TPS protections and abandoning Haitians “to a warzone the U.S. government has explicitly deemed unsafe.” In a Federal Register notice Friday, the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that armed groups operate with impunity in the country “enabled by a weak or effectively absent central government” but found that it was contrary to US national interests to have Haitians remain in the country on a temporary basis.

The agency is already facing multiple legal challenges over the curtailment of the TPS extension. The termination of protections is “dangerous, detached from reality, and fundamentally unjust,” said Mirian Albert, senior attorney at Lawyers for Civil Rights and counsel for plaintiffs suing to preserve the protections in the District of Massachusetts.

The country is experiencing unprecedented political violence, instability, and humanitarian collapse that’s led the State Department to warn Americans against travel there, she said.

The Trump administration has separately revoked protections for more than 200,000 Haitians admitted to the US through a Biden-era parole program.

Haitians protected by those programs fill essential roles in healthcare, transportation, and other industries, and those terminations “will come with an economic cost to all Americans,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us.