More than half a million Haitian refugees who sought shelter and stability in the United States will lose protection against deportation this summer under a policy change by the Trump administration.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday announced she was ending “temporary protected status” for an estimated 520,000 Haitians. Federal officials can grant TPS to residents of certain countries suffering war or disasters, allowing them to live and work even if they initially entered the U.S. without legal permission.
Trump during his presidential campaign baselessly claimed that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating pets and promised mass deportations over complaints that their presence was hurting communities. Ending TPS protections on Aug. 3 allows the administration to force Haitians to leave. Noem rolled back similar protections for some Venezuelans last month.
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Both nationalities had seen their TPS protection extended during the Biden administration, but Noem and Trump have argued that repeated TPS extensions were attracting people to the United States, creating a system ripe for abuse.
“President Trump and I are returning TPS to its original status: temporary,” Noem said in a statement.
Trump during his first administration also withdrew TPS for Haitians, although a court largely blocked the COVID-19 era move. After the Ohio controversy over the number of Haitian migrants, many of them covered by TPS, Trump told News Nation in October, “Absolutely I’d revoke it, and I’d bring them back to their country.”
President Barack Obama’s administration first granted TPS status to Haitians in 2010 after a devastating earthquake destroyed much of the island nation’s infrastructure, including its roads and airports, and killed as many as 300,000 people. The country remains unstable, with gang massacres and shots fired at commercial airliners.
Thursday, Homeland Security officials said that 57,000 Haitians were estimated to eligible to register for TPS in the months after Obama first offered it. By 2021, the number had jumped to 155,000 eligible people, and then to at least 520,694 last summer.