The Trump Administration Revokes Legal Status for More Than 50,000 Haitian Immigrants

They now have a daunting choice: return home or live undocumented.

Lynne Sladky/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The Department of Homeland Security announced Monday evening that more than 50,000 Haitian immigrants living in the United States will lose the status that protects them from deportation. As of July 22, 2019, they’ll  be forced to return to Haiti or risk living in the United States as undocumented immigrants in an era of heightened fear. 

Temporary protected status is granted by DHS to foreign nationals whose home countries are dealing with humanitarian crises such as war or, as in Haiti’s case, a natural disaster. It’s usually renewed in 6 to 18-month intervals. 

A 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck the small Caribbean country in 2010, killing an estimated 300,000 people and leaving millions homeless. President Barack Obama granted the special status to Haitians the following year.

Haitians’ TPS had been continually renewed since then, but in May, then-DHS head and now Trump chief of staff John Kelly announced that their status, which was coming up again for renewal in July, would only be renewed for six months and reevaluated in November.

Earlier this month, DHS terminated TPS for Nicaraguan immigrants, giving the 2,500 TPS holders until January 5, 2019 to leave the country.

Immigration activists and even members of Congress have cautioned the Trump administration against sending Haitian immigrants back. Since the earthquake, Haiti has been dealing with an ongoing cholera epidemic, chronic poverty, and underemployment, exacerbated by the ongoing recovery from Hurricane Matthew which killed hundreds in 2016. Proponents of extending their status also argue that Haitian TPS holders are leading productive lives in the US; according to a study by the Center for Migration Studies, 80 percent are employed, more than 6,000 have a mortgage, and 27,000 of their children are US citizens.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate