{"id":309342,"date":"2025-12-08T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T12:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=309342"},"modified":"2025-12-07T06:31:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T06:31:36","slug":"kristi-noem-lies-stop-the-deportation-of-340000-haitians-with-temporary-protected-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/12\/kristi-noem-lies-stop-the-deportation-of-340000-haitians-with-temporary-protected-status\/","title":{"rendered":"Kristi Noem Lies: Stop the Deportation of 340,000 Haitians with Temporary Protected Status"},"content":{"rendered":"

5 Dec 2025 – <\/em>Per\u00a0The Guardian<\/em> 26 Nov 2025, \u201cThe 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)<\/a> will expire on 3 February.”<\/p>\n

According to<\/a> a new Department of Homeland Security notice issued on Wednesday [3 Dec], TPS for approximately 340,000 Haitian refugees will be terminated next year.<\/p>\n

In the notice, the DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, said that Haiti no longer faces \u2018extraordinary and temporary conditions\u2019 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\u00a0record 1.4 million people<\/a>\u00a0from their homes this year.<\/p>\n

Despite acknowledging that \u2018certain conditions in\u00a0Haiti\u00a0remain concerning\u2019, including mass displacement and gang violence, and that the country\u2019s turmoil has \u2018spillover effects \u2026 [that] threaten not only Haiti but the stability of the wider Caribbean and the western hemisphere\u2019, the notice nonetheless argues that allowing Haitians to remain in the United States is \u2018contrary to the US national interest\u2019.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s capital, Port-au-Prince, and the surrounding area. This was followed by Hurricane Matthew in 2016, and the 7.2 earthquake which devastated Haiti\u2019s southern peninsula in 2021. However, TPS does not provide a pathway to permanent residency.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Also when TPS ends, the person\u2019s Employment Authorization Document (work permit) also expires, which means that even if a person isn\u2019t deported, they lose their ability to work and earn a living.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s attacks on Haitians follow in the footsteps of the Biden administration\u2019s deportation of 25,000 Haitians, the most by any administration. It was during Biden\u2019s presidency that border patrol agents in Texas were caught on camera whipping Haitian migrants, in scenes reminiscent of slavery.\u00a0 But under pressure from immigration activists, Biden renewed TPS for Haitian migrants for 18 months on July 1, 2024. On Feb. 20, 2025, Trump\u2019s 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 August 3, 2025.<\/p>\n

A court then ruled that the Trump administration needed to honor the full 18 months, which end on February 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 \u201cfamily values\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

The key here is\u00a0the review of<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0country conditions.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0As noted above, TPS was\u00a0created to protect people from having to return to unsafe conditions in their home countries.\u00a0Since the U.S-orchestrated 2004 coup against the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the most progressive in Haiti\u2019s history, U.S.-backed right-wing governments and elites in Haiti have empowered armed paramilitaries (so-called \u201cgangs\u201d) 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\u00a0President\u00a0Aristide\u2019s Lavalas Party. They have created what Haitians call a \u201chell on earth\u201d.\u00a0Armed 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\u2019s breadbasket Artibonite region.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Thousands of people have been killed in the last year and more than a million<\/em> have been forced to flee their homes.\u00a0 The death squads have attacked schools and hospitals\u2014any institution that benefits civil society.\u00a0 There is not one elected official in the country.\u00a0 There is no functioning government and there are no services.\u00a0 The current <\/strong>US State Department travel advisory to Haiti<\/strong><\/a> states, \u2018Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest, and limited health care.\u2019<\/strong>\u00a0 And this is the situation that Donald Trump and Kristi Noem want to force hundreds of thousands of people to return to.<\/p>\n

Kristi Noem is\u00a0lying<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0when she says, Haiti\u00a0no longer faces \u2018extraordinary and temporary conditions.\u2019 Haiti\u2019s increasingly deteriorating situation is indeed \u201cextraordinary,\u201d 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 February 29, 2004. The situation is only becoming more dire with the inhumane US foreign policy of increased militarism and reduced aid and services that could actually help people.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Haitians who choose to remain in the United States should be granted the legal permanent residency they have earned.<\/p>\n

Please stay tuned and support all efforts to block these heartless deportations.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Charlie Hinton is a member of\u00a0Haiti Action Committee<\/a><\/em>\u00a0<\/em>and the Drop LWOP Coalition. He is the author of the play <\/em>Solitary Man: A Visit to Pelican Bay State Prison and a book of collected writings, <\/em>Life Wish.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to a new Department of Homeland Security notice issued on Wednesday [3 Dec], TPS for approximately 340,000 Haitian refugees will be terminated next year. DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, said that Haiti no longer faces \u2018extraordinary and temporary conditions\u2019 that would prevent nationals from returning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":264482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[867,975,976,541,883,70],"class_list":["post-309342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anglo-america","tag-haiti","tag-haiti-action-committee","tag-latin-america-caribbean","tag-migrants","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309343,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309342\/revisions\/309343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}