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Trump Admin Terminating TPS for Haitians Slammed as Potential 'Death Sentence'
"Ending TPS for Haitians is cruel and dangerous, and a continuation of President Trump's racist and anti-immigrant practices," said Amnesty International USA.
Jun 28, 2025
Outrage over U.S. President Donald Trump's administration terminating Temporary Protected Status for around half a million Haitians, despite dire conditions in the Caribbean country, continued to mount on Saturday, with critics decrying the decision as harsh and hazardous.
"This is not just cruel—it's state-sanctioned endangerment," declared Haitian Bridge Alliance executive director Guerline Jozef.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said that the Trump administration "just decided to send thousands of innocent people who have been living and working here legally into imminent danger in Haiti. Trump will tear apart families, rip up communities, and leave businesses and nursing homes shorthanded. And no one will be safer."
Warren's fellow Massachusetts Democrat, Sen. Ed Markey, also weighed in on social media Saturday, arguing that "the Trump administration knows Haiti is not safe. This is a callous and shameful political decision that will have devastating human consequences. Saving lives will always be in the national interest."
"This is a callous and shameful political decision that will have devastating human consequences."
TPS was initially granted after an earthquake hit Haiti in 2010. The designation expires August 3, and Trump's Department of Homeland Security announced in a Friday statement that the termination will be effective on September 2. A DHS spokesperson said that "this decision restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that Temporary Protective Status is actually temporary."
"The environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home," the spokesperson added. "We encourage these individuals to take advantage of the department's resources in returning to Haiti, which can be arranged through the CBP Home app. Haitian nationals may pursue lawful status through other immigration benefit requests, if eligible."
While the DHS statement claims Haiti is safe, ignoring the deadly gang violence that has engulfed the country, the Trump administration's official notice has another focus, as some critics highlighted.
The notice states that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem "has determined that termination of TPS for Haiti is required because it is contrary to the national interest to permit Haitian nationals (or aliens having no nationality who last habitually resided in Haiti) to remain temporarily in the United States."
The Miami Herald reported that the U.S. Department of State currently "warns Americans not to travel to Haiti 'due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and limited healthcare.' This week, the agency also urged U.S. citizens to 'depart Haiti as soon as possible' or 'be prepared to shelter in place for an extended time period.'
According to the newspaper:
And just on Thursday, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau questioned the lack of action at the Organization of American States to address the crisis in Haiti.
"Armed gangs control the streets and ports of the capital city, and public order there has all but collapsed," he said. "While Haiti descends into chaos, the unfolding humanitarian, security, and governance crisis reverberates across the region."
The Miami Herald reached out to the State Department, asking the agency to explain its recommendations. A State Department spokesperson said the department does not comment on deliberations related to TPS determinations and referred questions to DHS.
"The administration is returning TPS to its original temporary intent," the spokesperson said. "TPS is a temporary protection, not a permanent benefit."
Noting the discrepancy between the two departments, Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) denounced the termination as "a deliberate act of cruelty."
Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said that "this is an act of policy violence that could literally be a death sentence. We should NOT be deporting anyone to a nation still dealing with a grave humanitarian crisis like Haiti. I stand with our Haitian neighbors and urge the Trump administration to reverse course."
Also urging the administration to "reverse this inhumane decision immediately," Amnesty International USA said that "ending TPS for Haitians is cruel and dangerous, and a continuation of President Trump's racist and anti-immigrant practices. Haitian TPS holders have built lives here—working, raising families, and contributing to their communities—all while fleeing unsafe situations in Haiti."
The termination came just two weeks after Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said that "at this time of untold suffering and fear, I reiterate my call to all states not to forcibly return anyone to Haiti, and to ensure that Haitians who have fled their country are protected against any kind of discrimination and stigmatization."
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'Unconscionable': Trump Ready to Garnish Wages for Indebted Student Loan Borrowers
"They're just cruel and want to take as much as possible from the folks who have very little," said one student borrower advocacy group.
May 05, 2025
With the Trump administration restarting collection efforts on defaulted student loans after a five-year reprieve on Monday, Mike Pierce of the Student Borrower Protection Center said the move "will further fan the flames of economic chaos for working families across this country"—particularly as the White House threatens to garnish the wages of people who struggle to make higher monthly payments.
The SBPC joined nearly 200 other organizations in sending a letter to the acting undersecretary of education, James Bergeron, condemning the administration's efforts to gut income-driven repayment options and eliminate the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which has delivered student debt relief to 1 million public service workers since it was implemented in 2007.
"The administration should move to enact policies that better protect student borrowers, rather than pursue misguided policies that will drive up costs and weaken protections," wrote the groups.
More than 42 million Americans have student debt, with more than $1.6 trillion owed in total. More than 5 million borrowers are currently in default, and that number could grow to about 10 million as the Trump administration ends programs that have been aimed at helping people pay off their loans in manageable amounts each month.
Collections are beginning months after Republican-led lawsuits succeeded in blocking former President Joe Biden's Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, and days after the GOP members of the House Education and Workforce Committee advanced more than $350 billion in proposed funding cuts for education programs—cuts that government watchdog Accountable.US said are "paving the way for tax cuts for themselves, billionaire donors, and corporations."
The Republicans approved:
- Slashing federal student aid by capping unsubsidized and Parent PLUS loans and eliminating subsidized loans for undergraduates and Grad PLUS loans entirely, which would disproportionately impact low-income families, especially those with students at HBCUs;
- Repealing a set of Biden-era protections—including rules establishing forgiveness for students of schools that closed or failed to lead to gainful employment—that have canceled at least $17.2 billion in federal student loans for nearly 1 million borrowers misled by predatory institutions;
- Repealing the Biden administration's SAVE plan and replacing it with just two fixed or income-based repayment plans, a change that could raise costs for millions of borrowers, including those making modest incomes; and
- Changing Pell Grant eligibility by altering the definition of full-time college attendance to 30 credit hours per year and requiring at least half-time attendance to qualify for any grant at all.
"To pay for tax cuts for the richest in this country, congressional Republicans are willing to gut the programs tens of millions of Americans rely on," said Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US. "Their education markup makes it abundantly clear that they're not just going to gut Medicaid, they're proposing hundreds of billions of dollars of cuts to programs that provide more opportunities for everyday Americans to access higher education. These cuts are a betrayal of congressional Republicans' promise to make government work for Americans and to lower their costs; in fact, it will do quite the opposite."
The Debt Collective, a union of student loan borrowers, pointed out that the Trump administration isn't required by law to begin collecting student debt on Monday.
"They're just cruel and want to take as much as possible from the folks who have very little," said the group.
Aside from garnishing borrowers' wages, the administration could further devastate millions of people as credit scores could tank when the Education Department begins collection activity.
The Federal Reserve projected in March that people with delinquencies could see their credit scores plummet by as many as 171 points, leading to higher costs for borrowers who later take out mortgages, car loans, and sign up for credit cards.
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) called President Donald Trump's threat to garnish wages in order to collect student debt "unconscionable."
The president and Education Secretary Linda McMahon, said Pressley, "should NOT be seizing people's hard-earned wages, tax refunds, and Social Security checks."
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Lawyers for Jailed Palestine Defender Mohsen Mahdawi Demand His Release
One attorney said that the former Columbia University organizer "sits in a jail cell because of his lawful speech," while another reminded supporters that Mahdawi "has not been charged with any crime."
Apr 23, 2025
Attorneys for Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student organizer at Columbia University and permanent U.S. resident caught up in the Trump administration's crusade against Palestine defenders, argued in federal court Wednesday that their client was illegally arrested and detained for his constitutionally protected speech and should be immediately freed.
In what Mahdawi's legal team hailed as a "victory," U.S. District Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford extended a temporary restraining order issued last week by Judge William Sessions III to prevent federal officials from transferring Mahdawi from Vermont, where he is being held at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans. Crawford also scheduled a new hearing for Mahdawi on April 30.
Addressing the nearly 100 letters submitted in support of Mahdawi, Crawford said that "no one has ever provided anything like that before," adding, "These were quite striking in geographic and philosophical breadth, including many members of the Jewish community."
Mahdawi, who is 34 years old and has been a green-card holder for a decade, was arrested on April 14 by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during an appointment for his citizenship test in Colchester, Vermont. He was steps away from naturalization; instead, federal agents attempted to force Mahdawi onto a plane bound for Louisiana, where other Palestine defenders are being held pending deportation proceedings.
Mahdawi's lawyers are seeking his immediate release.
"We ask this court to suspend this unlawful retaliation and slow the grave threat to free speech posed by his continued detainment by releasing Mr. Mahdawi on bail," his legal team said in a filing.
Luna Droubi, an attorney on the team, said after the hearing that "Mohsen Mahdawi sits in a jail cell because of his lawful speech."
"What the government provided thus far only establishes that the only basis they have to currently detaining him in the manner they did is his lawful speech," Droubi added. "We intend on being back in one week's time to free Mohsen."
"What the government provided thus far only establishes that the only basis they have to currently detaining him in the manner they did is his lawful speech."
Like the numerous other pro-Palestine activists arrested—critics say kidnapped—and detained by the Trump administration, the government concedes that Mahdawi committed no crime. However, under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, the secretary of state can expel noncitizens whose presence in the United States is deemed detrimental to foreign policy interests.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) argued that Mahdawi should be deported because letting him remain in the country "would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest."
Trump administration officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio have cited President Donald Trump's executive order ostensibly aimed at combating antisemitism and his edict authorizing the deportation of noncitizen students and others who took part in protests against Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza as justification for Mahdawi's arrest and detention.
However, Mahdawi has repeatedly condemned anti-Jewish hatred, including during a 2023 interview on CBS News' "60 Minutes" in which he asserted that "the fight for freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
VTDigger reported that hundreds of people gathered outside the Burlington, Vermont courthouse Wednesday to show support for Mahdawi and demand his release. Nora Rubinstein of Middletown Springs, Vermont said she was rallying in defense of "democracy and freedom" and to help the U.S. "return to the democratic principles this country was founded on."
"It's time to end the shredding of our democracy, the shredding of our Constitution," Rubinstein added.
On Monday, Mahdawi told U.S. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), who visited him behind bars, that "I wanted to become a citizen of this country because I believe in the principles of this country."
"The most important rights [are in] the Bill of Rights, which includes free speech on the top of these rights, freedom of assembly, freedom of press, freedom of having religion or not having religion at all," he added.
As Welch visited Mahdawi, Columbia University students, faculty, and alumni once again chained themselves to a fence to protest his detention and demand the release of not only Mahdawi but also of fellow Columbia activists and permanent U.S. residents Mahmoud Khalil and Yunseo Chung, as well as other student Palestine defenders including Rümeysa Öztürk, Badar Khan Suri, and others.
On Tuesday, a delegation of Massachusetts Democrats—U.S. Sen. Ed Markey and Reps. Jim McGovern and Ayanna Pressley—visited Khalil and Öztürk at the Louisiana ICE detention facility where they are being held. Markey accused the Trump administration of jailing the activists in Louisiana in a bid to have "the single most conservative circuit court of appeals in the United States of America" hear the case.
Mahdawi's lawyers said they believe their client will soon be free.
"We are very hopeful that he will be released," attorney Cyrus Mehta told supporters and media gathered outside the Burlington courthouse on Wednesday. "The judge wants to move quickly, and he realizes that this is a case of great importance for this country."
"What we're seeing here is unprecedented where they are so hell-bent on detaining students," Mehta added. "These are not hardened criminals. These are people who have not been charged with any crime, they have also not been charged under any of the other deportation provisions of the immigration act."
One of the attorneys read the crowd a statement from Mahdawi in which he said that "this hearing is part of the system of democracy" that "prevents a tyrant from having unchecked power."
"I am in prison," he added, "but I am not imprisoned."
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