Today the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) terminated Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti. When the decision takes effect on September 2, more than 500,000 Haitian community members will face deportation to a country mired in deadly political violence, mass displacement, and catastrophic levels of hunger.
The U.S. State Department has assigned Haiti its highest level 4 “Do Not Travel” warning due to widespread kidnappings, unrest, and violent crime. Nearly 1.3 million Haitians have been displaced within the country’s borders, as armed gangs seize control of entire neighborhoods, force people out of their homes, and wage terror on hospitals and schools. A record 5.7 million people - more than half of the Haitian population - face acute food insecurity. Rising instability, mass killings, and systematic sexual and gender-based violence have pushed the country “to the brink of collapse.”
“The Trump administration’s decision to terminate TPS amounts to a death sentence for many of our Haitian neighbors,” Blaine Bookey, Legal Director at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS), said today. “In its announcement, DHS absurdly declares that the ‘situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home.’ Having worked with partners on the ground in Haiti for the last 20 years, I can say with certainty this is a bald-faced lie. If deported, many Haitians currently residing in the United States will have no home to which they can return at all. Mass deportations will only create more instability in Haiti, exacerbating the country’s mounting displacement crisis and undermining the efforts of partners working to restore peace, at grave risk to their own safety. And those sent back will be particularly vulnerable to harm, in a country where deportees are routinely preyed upon by gangs and threatened by the authorities. The decision to terminate TPS for Haiti was clearly motivated not by reality, but by the deep-seated anti-Black racism that the president and his allies have for years wielded in despicable attacks on Haitian immigrants and refugees.”