The Trump administration has once again moved to halt humanitarian protections for Haitians living in the US, this time announcing that their Temporary Protected Status (TPS) will expire on February 3.
TPS will be terminated for about 340,000 Haitian immigrants next year, according to a new notice from the Department of Homeland Security issued Wednesday.
In the notice, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said Haiti would no longer face “extraordinary and temporary circumstances” that would prevent citizens from returning. The statement comes despite worsening instability and political turmoil in Haiti fueled by gang violence, which has forced a record more than 1.4 million people from their homes this year.
Despite acknowledging that “some conditions in Haiti remain worrying”, including large-scale displacement and mass violence, and that the country’s turmoil has “spill-through effects … (which) threaten not only Haiti but the stability of the broader Caribbean and the Western Hemisphere”. Yet the notice argues that allowing Haitians to remain in the United States is “contrary to the American national interest.”
The notice continued: “As is widely known, Haiti lacks a central authority with adequate availability and dissemination of law enforcement information to ensure that its citizens do not undermine the national security of the United States.”
It states: “Our immigration policy must be consistent with our foreign policy vision of a secure, sovereign, and self-reliant Haiti, not a country that Haitian citizens continue to leave in large numbers to seek opportunities in the United States.”
The latest move from DHS, which follows UNICEF’s estimate in October that more than 6 million Haitians, including 3.3 million children, are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, as Trump continues his sweeping crackdown on immigration, including temporary protections for citizens of some countries.
In July, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s effort to prematurely end TPS and work permits for about 521,000 Haitian immigrants. Earlier this year, DHS reversed Joe Biden’s 2024 extension of TPS for Haitians — making their status shorter and set to expire on September 2 instead of February 3 next year.
However, U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan ruled that Noem had failed to follow the process mandated by Congress for reviewing Haiti’s TPS designation.
Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump made baseless claims that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio — misinformation that other prominent Republicans, including JD Vance and Ted Cruz, quickly picked up and spread, resulting in multiple bomb threats across the city last year.
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