by Charlie Hinton
Per The Guardian on Nov. 26, 2025, “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 3 February.
“According to a new Department of Homeland Security notice issued on Wednesday, TPS for approximately 340,000 Haitian refugees will be terminated next year.
“In the notice, the DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, said that Haiti no longer faces ‘extraordinary and temporary conditions’ that would prevent nationals from returning. That statement comes despite worsening instability from gang violence in Haiti and political turmoil that has forced more than a record 1.4 million people from their homes this year.
“Despite acknowledging that ‘certain conditions in Haiti remain concerning,’ including mass displacement and gang violence, and that the country’s turmoil has ‘spillover effects … [that] threaten not only Haiti but the stability of the wider Caribbean and the western hemisphere.’ The notice nonetheless argues that allowing Haitians to remain in the United States is ‘contrary to the US national interest.’”
Temporary Protected Status (TPS) allows foreign nationals from designated countries to live and work in the United States temporarily due to unsafe conditions in their home countries, such as ongoing armed conflict or an environmental disaster that would prevent them from returning home safely.
In 2010, Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, granted TPS to Haiti after the disastrous earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people and devastated Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and the surrounding area. This was followed by Hurricane Matthew in 2016, and the 7.2 earthquake which devastated Haiti’s southern peninsula in 2021. However, TPS does not provide a pathway to permanent residency. Instead, TPS allows beneficiaries to live and, in some cases, work in the US for a limited amount of time, usually 6, 12 or 18 months, after which it must be renewed, or it can be cancelled.
Trump’s attacks on Haitians follow in the footsteps of the Biden administration’s deportation of 25,000 Haitians, the most by any administration. It was during Biden’s presidency that border patrol agents in Texas were caught on camera whipping Haitian migrants, in scenes reminiscent of slavery. But under pressure from immigration activists, Biden renewed TPS for Haitian migrants for 18 months on July 1, 2024.
On Feb. 20, 2025, Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, partially vacated that
notice and changed the extension period to one year, meaning that Haitian TPS holders who have been living, working, raising families with American-born children, and paying taxes could have been deported starting on Aug. 3, 2025. A court then ruled that the Trump administration needed to honor the full 18 months, which end on Feb. 3, and now it is refusing to extend TPS beyond the 18-month limit set by Biden. Since many of the children of TPS holders were born in this country and have birthright citizenship, the party of “family values” is threatening the devastating separation of many of these families, as well as attempting to cancel the constitutional right to birthright citizenship granted to all people born in the United States.
The key here is the review of country conditions. As noted above, TPS was created to protect people from having to return to unsafe conditions in their home countries. Since the U.S-orchestrated 2004 coup against the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the most progressive in Haiti’s history, U.S.-backed right-wing governments and elites in Haiti have empowered armed paramilitaries (so-called “gangs”) to attack opposition neighborhoods and facilitate drug and arms trafficking, while wreaking havoc on civil society. These paramilitaries support themselves by looting, as they burn houses, gang rape women and terrorize whole communities, particularly in neighborhoods supportive of former President Aristide’s Lavalas Party. They have created what Haitians call a “hell on earth.” Armed with weapons that flow in illegally, mainly from South Florida, these paramilitary forces now dominate 85-90% of Port-au Prince, and are moving into other parts of the country, including Haiti’s breadbasket Artibonite region.
These death squads control all roads in and out of Port-au-Prince, extracting bribes to pass through and creating mass shortages of basic supplies. Thousands of people have been killed in the last year and more than a million have been forced to flee their homes. The death squads have attacked schools and hospitals – any institution that benefits civil society. There is not one elected official in the country. There is no functioning government and there are no services. The
current U,S. State Department travel advisory to Haiti states, “Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest, and limited
health care.” And this is the situation that Donald Trump and Kristi Noem want to force hundreds of thousands of people to return to.
Kristi Noem is lying when she says, Haiti no longer faces ‘extraordinary and temporary conditions.’ Haiti’s increasingly deteriorating situation is indeed “extraordinary,” and has been made permanent for more than 20 years since the United States organized the coup against President Aristide, with a US military plane flying him and his family out of the country after kidnapping them in the dead of night as they slept on Feb. 29, 2004. The situation is only becoming more dire with the inhumane U.S. foreign policy of increased militarism and reduced aid and services that could actually help people.
For justice to be done, Haitians must be able to return to a country freed from the violence imposed by decades of U.S.-backed anti-democratic rule. Haitians who choose to remain in the United States should be granted the legal permanent residency they have earned.
Please stay tuned and support all efforts to block these heartless deportations.
Charlie Hinton is a member of Haiti Action Committee and the Drop LWOP Coalition. He is the author of the play “Solitary Man: A Visit to Pelican Bay State Prison” and a book of collected writings, “Life Wish.”
