The Trump administration is throwing out protections for roughly half a million Haitians that had shielded them from deportation. The decision announced Thursday means they would lose their work permits and could be eligible to be removed from the country by August of this year.
The Department of Homeland Security in a news release said they were vacating a decision by the Biden administration to renew Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. That status gives people legal authority to be in the country but doesn’t provide a long-term path to citizenship.
They are reliant on the government renewing their status when it expires. Critics, including Republicans and the Trump administration, have said that over time the renewal of the protection status becomes automatic, regardless of what is happening in the person’s home country.
“For decades the TPS system has been exploited and abused. For example, Haiti has been designated for TPS since 2010. The data shows each extension of the country’s TPS designation allowed more Haitian nationals, even those who entered the U.S. illegally, to qualify for legal protected status,” Homeland Security said in a statement announcing the change.
Homeland Security said an estimated 57,000 Haitians were eligible for TPS protections as of 2011 but by July of last year, that number had climbed to 520,694.
Congress created TPS in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters or civil strife, giving people authorization to work in increments of up to 18 months at a time.
Toward the end of the Biden administration, 1 million immigrants from 17 countries were protected by TPS, including people from Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Sudan, Ukraine and Lebanon. But the Trump administration has already moved to end the protections for Venezuelans.
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