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Haitian Resolve and the Limits of Resilience
We are a people who will fight for our survival and dignity, but there is also a limit to our resilience. The Trump administration's attacks have not only threatened our physical safety, they are also working to destroy our sense of psychological safety.
Oct 08, 2026
Over the summer, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration free rein to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants, along with hundreds of thousands of TPS holders from other countries, limiting the accountability any administration will have for making determinations about TPS for the foreseeable future.
Last month, a young pre-med college student named Pierre Damas Bel from Springfield, Ohio was found dead, by an apparent suicide. He was suffering depression brought on by the termination of TPS and being forced to wear an Immigration and Custom Enforcement-issued ankle bracelet.
What happened to Damas Bel represents the real human cost of these inhumane policies. But sadly, I don’t believe we have reached the nadir of this administration’s cruelty.
Those of us who have more legal protections against these violent policies must be resolute in speaking out, and finding ways to shield Haitians and other TPS holders from their cruelty.
Haitians have been here before.
For centuries, we’ve witnessed a similar pattern of using Haitian immigrants as political scapegoats. Haitians know all too well what it feels like to be targeted, and as a result we live with the collective trauma of being treated as less than human.
When I arrived in 1984, I encountered hatred fueled by ignorance, misinformation, and xenophobia. I was bullied relentlessly. I was called "Boat People," "HBO" (Haitian Body Odor), "f***ing Haitian," and "HIV carrier." I was physically assaulted on my way to and from school. Those experiences taught me, at a very young age, how quickly stereotypes and lies can strip someone of their dignity and sense of belonging.
Fast forward to 2024, I would never have imagined hearing a former president utter the words: "They're eating the cats. They're eating the dogs. They're eating the pets," during a presidential debate. At the time, many people dismissed those comments as absurd, entertaining, or inconsequential. I could not.
As a 52-year-old father of two teenage boys, I wasn't amused. I was triggered. Those words reopened wounds I had buried for decades and forced me to relive the trauma I experienced as a newly arrived Haitian immigrant in New York City.
But by 2024, I was no longer afraid for myself. I was afraid for my sons, who had grown up embracing their Haitian heritage with pride and confidence. I wondered what these renewed attacks on Haitians would mean for them. Would they become targets of ridicule or violence? Would they feel pressured to hide a core part of who they are? Would they experience the same fear and isolation that defined so much of my youth?
Those questions kept me awake at night. Eventually, they compelled me to have "the talk" with my boys. For the first time, I shared the painful experiences I had buried for decades. We discussed what they were seeing and hearing in their social circles, and I tried to prepare them to navigate a climate where hateful rhetoric can quickly lead to real-life consequences. It was a conversation I had hoped I would never have to have. However, it reminded me that every generation must remain vigilant in confronting prejudice and defending the human rights and dignity of those who come after us.
The psychological ramifications of TPS' end have reverberated across the Haitian community in devastating ways. There are those who have already been deported and face an unsafe future, those of us who exist on bated breath, and then there are people like Damas Bel whose mental health has been shattered by the indignity of it all.
When I feel dejected and afraid for my community, I try to remember the Haitian Day of Outrage in 1990 when an estimated 50,000-150,000 Haitians and allies marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, shutting down Lower Manhattan. We were protesting against the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) discriminatory designation of Haitians as a high-risk group for HIV/AIDS and its policy of banning Haitian Americans from donating blood. The policy was rooted in racism rather than science, and fueled dangerous stereotypes. That historic demonstration played a significant role in pressuring the FDA to eventually reverse its position.
That memory reminds me that we are a people who will fight for our survival and dignity, but there is also a limit to our resilience. These attacks have not only threatened our physical safety, they are also working to destroy our sense of psychological safety.
We must ask ourselves how we can protect young Haitians like Damas Bel, and all those made vulnerable by the Trump administration and its far-right MAGA supporters. Those of us who have more legal protections against these violent policies must be resolute in speaking out, and finding ways to shield Haitians and other TPS holders from their cruelty.
The best way to know what you can do to stand in solidarity with these communities is to first connect with local organizations taking decisive steps to protect and stand with those who are in the bullseye of the current administration’s attempts to strip all of us of our rights and dignity.
Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, where I work as a case manager and community organizer, is one of these organizations. We know that people power is the only thing that will protect us. We are using every tool at our disposal to provide care and safety for our community.
Here are some ways that you can join us in supporting Haitian and all TPS holders.
Actions you can take TODAY:
- Call your Senators or email them to urge them to vote yes on S. 4814 to extend TPS for Haitians until 2029;
- Call your US House representatives and demand that they sign the discharge petition and support The Dream and Promise Act (H.R. 1589) which would provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, TPS holders, and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) holders; and
- Get involved with court accompaniment programs, mutual aid networks, and your local rapid response networks in support and defense of immigrant communities in your neighborhood.
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'Blood Is On Their Hands': Haitian Student Dies In Apparent Suicide After Trump Ends Deportation Protections
"Because of the blatant cruelty and racism of Trump’s immigration policies, Pierre Damas Bel was denied the chance to fulfill his dreams."
Sep 01, 2026
Since President Donald Trump was running for office two years ago, Springfield, Ohio has been a central target of Trump and Vice President JD Vance's racist attacks and violent mass deportation operation, with the White House threatening the city's Haitian population with forced removal back to their unstable home country.
On Monday, Springfield became the site of a new tragedy that immigrant rights advocates said was directly caused by the Trump administration's xenophobic agenda, particularly its termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 350,000 Haitian migrants, when 20-year-old Pierre Damas Bel was killed by a tractor trailer on Interstate 70—apparently dying by suicide after the loss of the protections pushed him into despair.
As The Washington Post reported Tuesday, college student and aspiring doctor Bel parked on the highway's shoulder Monday morning, got out of his car, and walked into westbound traffic. He was pronounced dead at the scene after being struck.
Ohio authorities are investigating, but Bel's family believes his death to be a suicide.
His family told the Post that Bel had become distressed in recent weeks after the US Supreme Court allowed Trump's termination of TPS for Haitians and Syrians.
Although he had a pending asylum case and a hearing scheduled for October, Bel was required to report to a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of terminating TPS. Officers placed an electronic monitoring device on his ankle.
In late July, Bel wrote in an Instagram post: “I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone. Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience.”
The Post reported that classmates bullied Bel over the bracelet, and he was unable to continue playing soccer as he had for years.
“He felt like he was treated like an animal,” his father, Pierres Ronal Bel, told the Post.
Last Friday, it appeared that Bel would not be able to continue in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) due to the Trump administration's monitoring of him as it pursued deportation. As the Post reported:
His JROTC class instructor handed students their uniforms, which resemble those of the US armed forces, but did not give one to Bel. His father said the college student concluded it was because of the device strapped around his ankle.
“He came home that day feeling very bad,” Pierres Ronal Bel said through a translator.
Bel "killed himself because of the Trump administration’s obsession with hurting Haitians and the humiliating shame of an ICE ankle monitor," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. "His blood is on their hands."
The White House had threatened to flood Springfield with ICE agents earlier this year when it first announced it was ending TPS, which for 16 years has provided Haitians with deportation protections. During the 2024 election, Springfield ended up in Trump and Vance's crosshairs as the two Republicans spread baseless, racist lies that Haitian community members there were eating their neighbors' pets.
TPS was initially granted to Haitians after the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 in Haiti—one of the worst disasters in modern history and one that the country has struggled to fully recover from, as it's also faced soaring violence and unrest following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. The US State Department warns Americans not to travel to Haiti for any reason due to gang violence, kidnappings, and an ongoing humanitarian crisis there.
Despite that, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has gloated that "the T in TPS stands for TEMPORARY" and urged Haitians who have been legally living and working in the US for years to go back to "Home Sweet Haiti"—making such comments as at least 47 people were killed and 50 were kidnapped in a gang attack near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince late last month.
Guerline Jozef of the Haitian Bridge Alliance told the Post that the Trump administration's policies "are what caused [Bel's] untimely death."
Bel came to the US in 2024 to reunite with his parents, who had left Haiti three years earlier. Reichlin-Melnick said that "he almost certainly flew here through the [Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans] parole program, entering legally after a background check and probably with his parents having sponsored him. He broke not a single law. Not one."
Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García (D-Ill.) said that "because of the blatant cruelty and racism of Trump’s immigration policies, Pierre Damas Bel was denied the chance to fulfill his dreams."
"This never should have happened," he said. "His blood, and the blood of all those who have died as a result of these policies, is in the hands of Trump and his top officials who have championed them."
The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline—which offers 24/7, free, and confidential support—can be reached by calling or texting 988, or through chat at 988lifeline.org.
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'Sadism': Trump DHS Boasts of Deportation Flight to Haiti in 'Propaganda' Video
"These are our neighbors and coworkers who were legally living and working here," said one advocate. "Stripping away their protections and then threatening them with deportation is cruel beyond words."
Aug 28, 2026
By releasing a video of Black men wearing handcuffs and prison uniforms being hauled onto a deportation flight, the US Department of Homeland Security appeared to be fulfilling a key objective of President Donald Trump's decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants, said one immigration policy expert on Thursday.
President Donald Trump "hates Haitians," said American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, "and the White House wanted videos of Black people in chains, so they stripped them all of status."
Reichlin-Melnick said the video, which also features a Haitian song and the text "Temporary Meant Temporary. Leave Now" on screen, was "propaganda for an audience of people that thrills to the sight of Black men being led in chains" and whom Trump's mass deportation agenda and racist attacks on Haitians, Somalis, and other refugee populations are aimed at satisfying.
The video was released a week after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent a charter flight with 161 Haitians on board to Haiti, where gang violence, kidnappings, and humanitarian crises that have continued more than a decade after the 2010 earthquake have pushed the US State Department to maintain its highest "Do Not Travel" warning for Americans.
The administration said that flight would be the first of many, following the US Supreme Court ruling in June that allowed DHS to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians.
The National Office of Migration in Haiti said last week that the Haitians aboard the ICE flight had not benefited from TPS, but were people who were facing removal proceedings due to criminal convictions or who had entered the US without authorization.
In the video—as in the Trump administration's persistent rhetoric about its mass deportation operation, which it claims is targeting "the worst of the worst" violent criminals—DHS suggested the Haitians who have been granted TPS for years pose a danger to the US public, despite the fact that criminal convictions make people ineligible for the protected status.
"TPS holders had been living and working legally and paying taxes," said Drop Site News—taxes, Reichlin-Melnick stressed, that do not permit them to benefit from federal assistance programs including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Medicaid.
David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the "sadism" depicted in the DHS video was "unrelenting."
The video was released as Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami called on the Trump administration to "rethink" its decision to end TPS for Haitians following an August 23 gang attack outside the country's capital of Port-au-Prince, in which at least 47 people were killed and at least 50 were kidnapped.
"The country is not safe, that Haiti is still a house on fire," Wenski told OSV News. "This should cause our administration to rethink its decision to send back into Haiti over 300,000 Haitians."
A bill introduced in the Senate by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) would extend TPS for Haitians through early 2029, and "would pass very easily" if Trump "would voice his support," said Wenski.
Cory Archibald of the anti-Zionist group Track AIPAC called for prosecutions of top White House officials including Trump, Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller, and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, "all the way on down to the masked chuds joyriding in this video and loading these men onto planes."
"All of them are guilty," she said, "and all of them should be prosecuted."
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'Cruel and Shameful': ICE Begins Mass Deportation of Haitians After Trump TPS Revocation
One Democratic congresswoman denounced the expulsions, which followed the lifting of temporary protected status for 350,000 Haitians, as "a humanitarian betrayal that will stain America for generations."
Aug 21, 2026
A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter flight on Thursday deported 161 Haitians following the Trump administration's cancellation of temporary protected status for 350,000 people from the Caribbean nation ravaged by deadly gang violence and a wider humanitarian crisis.
The first of what the administration says will be a wave of mass deportations to Haiti followed a June decision by the right-wing US Supreme Court affirming the Department of Homeland Security's revocation of temporary protected status for Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, many of whom have lived in the United States for years under TPS due to unsafe conditions in their countries.
However, Haiti's National Office of Migration said that none of those aboard Thursday's flight were former TPS beneficiaries; rather, they were "people facing removal proceedings after entering the US without authorization, people who had served prison sentences, and some individuals born outside Haiti to at least one Haitian parent," according to The Haitian Times.
Late last month, President Donald Trump ordered ICE to ramp up arrests of Haitians, who have been the target of racist verbal attacks by the president and other Republicans. Vice President JD Vance, infamously—and baselessly—claimed during Trump's 2024 presidential campaign that the migrants were killing and eating people's pets in Springfield, Ohio.
Beloved Springfield pastor Gilbert Joubert Adrien was arrested along with another Haitian by ICE agents on Thursday morning.
Carl Ruby, also a local pastor and founder of immigrant advocacy group G92, told the Springfield News-Sun on Friday that Adrien's arrest inflicted a "profound wound" to the "embattled" Haitian community.
“Pastor Joubert Adrien left Haiti because his life was in danger, served Christ and his congregation faithfully, and his arrest shows how far ICE will stoop to incite panic among people who came here peacefully, came here legally, and offered nothing but good to our community,” Ruby said.
Thursday's deportations came despite continuing warnings about Haiti's deteriorating security conditions. Gangs control an estimated 70% of the capital city of Port-au-Prince and major transportation routes, while roughly 1.5 million of the Caribbean nation's approximately 12 million people have been displaced by violence, according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration.
The UN says more than 3,100 Haitians were killed and nearly 1,200 others wounded between January and June of this year. The violence isn't confined to Port-au-Prince; for example, at least 70 people were killed and 30 injured in a March gang massacre in the Artibonite region.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the immigration nonprofit Global Refuge, said earlier this month that it is a “stunning contradiction” that a government that advises Americans against traveling to Haiti due to the dangerous security situation there would “compel hundreds of thousands of Haitians into such dire circumstances."
The Trump administration policy, O'Mara Vignarajah added, "is an unconscionable abdication of our moral responsibility."
Democratic US lawmakers also condemned the deportations.
Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)—who earlier this year led the Republican-controlled House of Representatives' remarkable passage of a bill extending TPS for Haiti for three years—called the Trump administration's policy "cruel and shameful."
"We should not deport ANYONE into an ongoing humanitarian crisis," Pressley added. "The Senate must come back into session NOW and pass our bill to extend TPS for Haiti before more people die."
The biggest deportation flight in months is sending Haitian families back to the violence and instability they fled in the first place.These folks have nowhere to go because they have lived most of their lives in the U.S. This is utterly shameful.
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— Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@frost.house.gov) August 21, 2026 at 9:08 AM
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Wednesday on social media: "Haitian families on TPS are part of the fabric of our community and our economy. They're neighbors, workers, and friends who have been in the US legally to stay safe from horrific violence in Haiti. It is cruel for Donald Trump to end TPS protections for them now."
Congressman Greg Landsman (R-Ohio) also took to social media, writing Thursday that "our Haitian neighbors deserve dignity and respect... not this dangerous deportation effort from the Trump administration."
Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) asserted Friday that "our Haitian neighbors asked only for safety from the gang violence, rampant sexual exploitation, and vicious anarchy that has totally overtaken their nation."
"Donald Trump saw their suffering, and asked only how he could make it worse," she added. "His act to force thousands of men, women, and children back into the same hell they barely escaped with their lives is a humanitarian betrayal that will stain America for generations."
Thursday's ICE flight landed in the relatively peaceful northern city of Cap-Haitien, where The Associated Press interviewed deportees including Jean Diane Louis, who left Haiti when he was 5 years old.
"ICE came and took me without questioning me,” Louis said. “They just sent me here.”
Back in Ohio, Viles Dorsainvil, director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, told the News-Sun that “behind every number is a human being."
"Behind every detention is a family," Dorsainvil added. "Behind every deportation is a mother, a father, a husband, a wife, a child, a friend, a church member, a coworker, or a neighbor whose life may be changed forever.”
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The End of Temporary Protected Status Will Unleash More ICE Arrests and Deportations
This is the reality that TPS recipients now face: either they willingly self-deport to an unsafe country or remain in the US and be hunted by ICE agents.
Jul 27, 2026
On June 25, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that decisions made by the Department of Homeland Security regarding Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, are not subject to judicial review. As the American Immigration Council notes, because of the Supreme Court’s procedures, that decision will not formally go into effect until 32 days after the ruling was issued. This small window has allowed the lower courts to continue blocking the Trump administration’s efforts to prematurely end humanitarian protections for Haitians and other groups.
That all ends on July 27—today, 32 days after Mullin v. Doe, hundreds of thousands of TPS recipients from Haiti and several other countries are expected to lose their work permits. More terminations will follow in the upcoming months. This includes protections for people from Somalia (August 20), El Salvador (September 9), Sudan (October 19), Ukraine (October 19) and Lebanon (November 27). The latter of which are currently facing violent military invasions from Russia and Israel respectively.
With the Supreme Court’s mandate now going into effect, there will be little, if anything, the lower courts can do to block these terminations.
To be frank, the situation is bleak. While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contends that conditions in Haiti have “improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home,” the State Department actively advises Americans to avoid traveling to Haiti “for any reason due to the risk of crime, terrorism, kidnapping, unrest, and limited healthcare.” Similar travel advisories have been issued for Syria, Burma, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Ukraine, and Yemen.
This is what passes as “generosity” in President Donald Trump’s “Christian nation”: intentionally putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of hardworking, law-abiding people in danger while offering them a pittance to leave their lives and loved ones behind.
The Trump administration knows these countries are not safe. It knows that deporting TPS recipients to these places puts their lives at risk. It simply does not care.
On July 17, DHS General Counsel James Percival posted on Twitter-X: “For those with an expiring TPS designation, these final days provide one last opportunity to accept $2,600 and a free flight home. We strongly suggest you take advantage of this generous offer.” This is what passes as “generosity” in President Donald Trump’s “Christian nation”: intentionally putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of hardworking, law-abiding people in danger while offering them a pittance to leave their lives and loved ones behind.
Thus far, congressional efforts have failed to stop this blatant cruelty. On July 23, Senate Republicans blocked an attempt to extend TPS for Haitians.
To make matters even worse, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reportedly made plans to ramp up operations to arrest and deport Haitian migrants. Documents obtained by CBS News suggest that these operations could start as early as this week—not even a month after ICE agents murdered Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero.
These plans include targeting migrants in Ohio, home to one of the nation’s largest Haitian communities. These are the same communities that, in 2024, then-candidates Trump and Vice President JD Vance targeted with their racist lies about “they are eating the dogs” and “eating the cats.” And to be clear, even Vance admits that they were lies: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do.” This is the same vile bigotry that Justice Samuel Alito and the other conservatives on the Supreme Court found to be not “overtly racial.”
Importantly, this is not the first time that ICE has reportedly made plans targeting Ohio. In late January, news outlets reported that ICE was preparing to launch an operation in the state lasting at least 30 days. That operation would have started sometime after TPS for Haitians were slated to end on February 3. Fortunately, a district court intervened and extended those protections, thereby preventing this Minnesota-style raid from occurring.
This is the reality that TPS recipients now face: either they willingly self-deport to an unsafe country or remain in the US and be hunted by ICE agents.
While there is still time (and to be clear, and it’s quickly running out), I urge everyone to call their representatives and senators and demand that they extend TPS for Haitians, Syrians, and others whose protections are at risk.
What few legal options they may have had are quickly disappearing. The Supreme Court’s decision bars review of any non-constitutional claim. Any challenge regarding racial discrimination “will likely fail.” Meanwhile, the Trump administration has indefinitely paused visa processing for nationals from 75 countries, including Haiti, Syria, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan. On February 2, the National Immigration Law Center and several other advocacy groups filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of this policy. That case—Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) v. Rubio—is currently pending in court.
The administration is also making it harder to obtain a green card, not processing new Deferred Action for Childhood Arivals applications (while also intentionally delaying the processing of renewals), and severely restricting refugee and asylum programs. As the CATO Institute notes, the Trump administration’s policies have significantly cut legal immigration far more than unauthorized entries. Their analysis found that these cuts are harming US citizens, undermining US prosperity, and increasing the US deficit.
Ending TPS for Haitians and other groups will only worsen these problems. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), for instance, remarked that this decision will “create a crisis in our hospitals, nursing, and in the I/DD [intellectual and developmental disabilities] community” where roughly one-third of Haitian TPS holders work. Gov. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) has warned, “If [Haitians] lose temporary protected status and they no longer can work and the companies can’t employ them, that’s a blow to the economy, that’s a blow to the state.”
The tragic irony in all this is that the Trump administration’s policies serve no one. TPS is helping people in dire need—people who are contributing to the US. Deporting them only makes the country poorer. If ending those protections leads to more ICE agents flooding our cities, then all of us will be less safe.
As things stand now, Congress remains the most—and perhaps only—viable option for helping TPS recipients. While there is still time (and to be clear, and it’s quickly running out), I urge everyone to call their representatives and senators and demand that they extend TPS for Haitians, Syrians, and others whose protections are at risk.
Helping these people is the morally right thing to do. It is also politically and economically in the best interest of the country and international community. For their sake and our own, we must extend TPS.
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'Bigotry' as Government Policy: Trump Orders ICE to Ramp Up Arrests of Haitians
"ICE has been ordered to round up nurses, home health aides, factory workers, teachers, students, and thousands of others who have been living and working here legally for years; who’ve done nothing wrong."
Jul 27, 2026
Mass arrests of Haitian immigrants by federal agents could begin as early as this week, according to federal documents regarding President Donald Trump's new directive to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement following the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court's ruling that Trump could end deportation protections for the community.
A binding mandate was expected to be sent to lower courts on Monday regarding the high court's decision last month that held the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could strip 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians of their Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which is granted to migrants from certain countries facing disasters, armed conflicts, or other conditions that would put immigrants in danger if they were forced to return there.
After the mandate is transmitted, Haitians across the country will lose their ability to legally live and work in the US, and the administration is reportedly already planning to send ICE agents into states including Ohio—where Haitian communities were targeted by Trump and Vice President JD Vance during the 2024 election—to quickly arrest and deport migrants to their crisis-stricken home country.
Jean Négot Bonheur Delva, director-general of Haiti’s National Office of Migration, told the Haitian Times this month that according to the US embassy in the Caribbean country, about 250 former TPS beneficiaries could be forced back to Haiti on flights each week.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, emphasized that the reported operation targeting Haitian communities is just the latest evidence that Trump is rounding up people who have been living and working in the US for years, despite the White House's claims that it is going after "the worst of the worst."
"The majority of Haitians with TPS today entered the US lawfully on humanitarian parole during the Biden administration, and then transitioned to TPS before their parole status expired," said Reichlin-Melnick. "Those people have not spent a single day in violation of immigration law."
The crisis in Haiti that necessitated TPS for people who arrived in the US from the country, he added, "hasn't ended."
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with widespread food insecurity, and large swathes of the country as well as transport routes are controlled by armed gangs. Violence intensified toward the end of 2025 "and remains the dominant force shaping the daily life of Haitians," according to the United Nations, with more than 8,100 killings reported last year, and gangs have increasingly used children in violent attacks.
Many healthcare facilities are "barely functioning," and extreme weather including hurricanes and droughts have worsened the humanitarian crisis. The country has also struggled to fully recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands of Haitians.
Last week, US Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) spoke out about a Pentagon plan to strengthen coordination between the UN's Gang Suppression Task Force in Haiti and a private military contractor run by Erik Prince, a close ally of Trump's. The contractor, Vectus Global, has conducted drone strikes that have killed dozens of Haitian civilians.
Those conditions are what DHS suggested Haitians should voluntarily return to, after having built lives in the US, when the agency told CBS News on Monday that TPS has been used as a "defacto amnesty program" and called on people who are about to lose protections that have been in place for 16 years to "self-deport."
"What we would say now is it's closing time which means you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here," DHS told CBS News. "The good news is it's not too late to get a $2,600 check and a free flight home."
The Supreme Court's majority asserted last month that Trump administration officials did not make "overtly racial" comments about Haitians that would suggest the push to end TPS for the population was driven by "racial animus"—but US District Judge Ana Reyes in the District of Columbia came to the opposite conclusion earlier this year, saying then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had likely pushed to end TPS "because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants.”
Reyes pointed out that Noem had not acknowledged the $1.3 billion Haitian TPS holders pay each year in taxes, and said Trump's racist comments about Haitians in the US—including that they "probably have AIDS" and that residents of the community in Springfield, Ohio were eating their white neighbors' pets—were rooted in "racial animus."
The ICE directive to ramp up enforcement operations against "an ethnic group the president has repeatedly attacked is bigotry as official government policy," said Reichlin-Melnick.
Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) called on members of Congress to sign on to a discharge petition she put forward for a vote on "the American Dream and Promise Act, to extend protections for TPS holders from Haiti and 16 other countries."
"In less than four days, House Democrats secured 210 signatures, including two Republicans, we just need eight more members of Congress to force a vote," said Garcia. "TPS holders, you are not alone, we are with you!"
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Trump's Deadly, Cruel Immigration Policy May Be a Political Failure As Well
As more information comes out about lives lost, communities harmed, and an economy hobbled by the loss of critical workers, previously supportive voters may turn against Trump's mass deportation agenda.
Jul 24, 2026
The Trump administration is doing everything it can to get rid of what it considers to be “undesirable” people.
The administration has removed temporary protected status (TPS) for more than a million people from over a dozen countries. It is sending people back to active war zones in Sudan and Somalia. It is deporting people to Myanmar, a country under a military dictatorship. In the case of Venezuela, it is returning people to a country struggling to deal with the aftereffects of an earthquake.
Some holders of this status have been in the country for a long time. Nearly 90% of the 170,000 Salvadorans who have TPS, first granted 25 years ago, participate in the US labor force, contributing over US$5 billion to the US economy.
The administration makes no exceptions in its campaign to deport anyone and everyone. Even as it has promised to fight a war on behalf of the people of Iran, it has reportedly provided information about Iranian asylum-seekers to the Iranian government. These details about their lives, such as their sexual orientation and religious beliefs, make it even more likely that they will be persecuted on return. Dozens of Russians, who don’t enjoy TPS, were flown back to Russia, where several were immediately slapped with draft notices.
The administration has tried to tout the successes of its deportation program. But the deaths of citizens and noncitizens alike have put supporters of the president on the defensive.
There is no length to which the administration won’t go to deport people, even American citizens like the children born in the United States who were kicked out of the country along with their parents. So far, the Supreme Court has blocked the administration’s attempt to overturn the “birthright citizenship” clause in the US Constitution. But President Donald Trump is still pushing his allies to take up the fight in Congress to change the law.
The administration even tried to add 2.7 million living people to the “Death Master File,” which is a database of dead people maintained by the Social Security Administration. Trump’s plan was to make life so difficult for people declared “dead” that they would self-deport or, if they showed up to dispute their “death,” to detain them in preparation for deportation. It was only because of a whistleblower that this plan didn’t go into effect.
But the most visible effort by the US government has been to target the approximately 14 million “unauthorized immigrants” who, as of 2023, constituted over 4% of the US population. Such immigrants keep the American economy afloat by picking fruit, slaughtering cows, building houses, and taking care of the elderly.
Trump’s mass deportation campaign, in other words, would wreck the US economy. The undocumented don’t take away jobs from native-born Americans because the latter generally don’t want the jobs that immigrants fill. But the administration is willing to risk economic disaster in its effort to keep America a predominantly white country.
Trump’s anti-immigrant plan has not just evicted people. It has not just locked them away in detention centers. It has killed them.
In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were involved in two killings. Joan Sebastian Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian national living with his wife and young daughter in a small town in Maine, was not the subject of an ICE raid, but ICE agents killed him anyway. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant, was a businessman and father of three on his way to work in Houston when agents stopped his car and shot him.
More than a dozen people have died in these kinds of interactions with ICE, including two US citizens—Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good—protesting ICE actions in Minnesota.
The number of detainees who have died in custody is even higher. Tens of thousands of people are being held in detention facilities that the Trump administration has established around the country. Despite administration claims that it is only deporting dangerous criminals, more than 70% of those detained have no prior criminal convictions.
More than 50 people have died in the detention facilities, a rate that is more than twice as high as Trump’s first term. They have died because of conditions inside the facilities or because they didn’t receive sufficient medical care. Several have died by suicide.
The Trump administration has pledged to deport a million people a year. It hasn’t quite reached that benchmark, with the administration itself claiming around 900,000 deportations as of mid-May. It has also claimed that more than 2 million people have self-deported. However, without transparent data from the Department of Homeland Security, it is difficult to verify the administration’s claims.
These numbers are critical to the administration’s approval rating. On virtually all other policies, Trump is losing popularity. Inflation numbers remain high, and the economy is failing millions of Americans. The war in Iran continues to push up gas prices. The administration is still dogged by controversies around budget cuts, corruption, anti-vaccine policies, and connections to Jeffrey Epstein. The overall approval rating for the administration is around 37%, with a large percentage of independent voters now adopting negative views of the president.
The one issue where a sizable number of Americans still approve of administration policies, however, is immigration. Compared to the economy at 33% and the war in Iran at 29%, 40% of Americans approve of his immigration policies. But even here the numbers are declining, since half of Americans supported his approach to immigration when he took office in 2025.
The administration has tried to tout the successes of its deportation program. But the deaths of citizens and noncitizens alike have put supporters of the president on the defensive. The detention and deportation of key members of communities—hard workers, religious leaders, even those espousing the same conservative family values of the administration—have led to a significant decline in anti-immigrant sentiment among Republicans.
Still, with the economy on the rocks and the war in Iran nowhere near an end, the Republicans will likely try to emphasize the “success” of the administration on immigration policy in the upcoming midterm elections in November. It will be a desperate strategy. As more information comes out about lives lost, communities harmed, and an economy hobbled by the loss of critical workers, the administration’s deportation strategy may turn out to be a failure politically as well for the president and his party.
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SCOTUS’ Rulings on TPS and Asylum Entries Supercharge Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Agenda
With these decisions, the Supreme Court once again bends the knee to Trump’s vile agenda of violence and death; eliminating humanitarian protections and denying asylum to those who need them most betrays every value that makes this nation great.
Jun 26, 2026
On June 25, the Supreme Court drastically expanded the Trump administration’s ability to shape the nation’s immigration system. In two separate 6-3 decisions, the court’s conservative majority ruled that the administration can revoke Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian migrants, as well as physically block asylum-seekers from entering the country and applying for legal protections.
Both rulings are as cruel as they are nonsensical.
Temporary Protected Status (TPS)
Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has sought to end TPS for over 1 million migrants from 13 countries, including Venezuela, Haiti, Somalia, and Syria. These termination orders have been challenged in court and, to date, seven of them remain paused.
The Supreme Court’s ruling, however, puts all of them in jeopardy. While it allows DHS to remove legal protections for Haitians and Syrians specifically, it paves the way for the department to terminate TPS for any group with little to no oversight.
if Trump’s gross fearmongering about Haitians eating cats and dogs is not “overtly racial,” then it’s hard to imagine this Supreme Court acknowledging any of this administration’s blatant racism and xenophobia.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito claims that the courts are prohibited from reviewing whether DHS’ decision to terminate TPS complied with the legally required procedures needed to cancel the status. For example, whether former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem “inadequately consulted the State Department about conditions in Syria” or, more broadly, whether “her decision that country conditions in Syria and Haiti justified termination of their TPS designations” are exempt from any form of judicial review.
Importantly, the Supreme Court did not rule that DHS followed the proper protocols when ending TPS. Nor did it determine that conditions in those countries were safe—and, in fact, the Trump administration knows they are not. The State Department has active travel advisories warning Americans against traveling to Syria and Haiti “for any reason” due to the risk of crime, terrorism, kidnapping, unrest, limited healthcare, hostage taking, and armed conflict. It is also worth noting that the present conditions in those countries are the direct result of America’s actions in Syria through decades of sanctions and military intervention; and in Haiti, through years of colonial occupation and repeatedly undermining their democratic process.
For the conservative justices, none of this matters. These issues are, in their view, beyond the scope of the courts.
This is a ridiculous assessment. The relevant statute (8 U.S.C. 1254a) reads: “There is no judicial review of any determination […] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state under this subsection.” The court’s conservatives read the word “determination” here to refer to (i) the final decision, (ii) the entire decision-making process, and (iii) every sub-decision within that process. Based on that definition, they conclude that this statute “squarely bars” the courts from assessing the legality of any aspect of DHS’ decision to end TPS.
As Justice Elena Kagan puts it, this interpretation is not only “very broad,” but “very strange.” In her dissenting opinion, she correctly notes that the statute only applies to the final “determination” with regards to whether TPS is actually granted, terminated, or extended. It “does nothing to stop courts from reviewing […] other things” such as “the procedural steps the Secretary must undertake prior to making any determination about country conditions.”
This is not only more consistent with the relevant text but reflects a basic presumption inherent to our system of checks and balances—namely, that “Congress intends the executive to obey its statutory commands and, accordingly, that it expects the courts to grant relief when an executive agency violates such a command.”
After all, if Congress intended DHS to have broad authority to revoke TPS at its sole discretion, then why would it create a multi-step protocol that the department must follow to lawfully end those protections? That fact alone entails that it always intended how DHS reached its “determination” to be subject to judicial and external review.
The conservative majority ignores such considerations. Instead of proper judicial interpretation, they offer a politically motivated and disingenuous rationale designed to give the Trump administration complete control over the humanitarian program.
To this end, the Supreme Court granted the Trump administration one more gift: sanitizing its racism.
The court rejected the plaintiff’s claim that terminating TPS for Haitians was racially motivated and thus violated the equal protection clause. For the court’s conservatives, none of President Trump’s past remarks—which include that Haitians are “eating the dogs,” “probably have AIDS,” and that Haiti is a “shithole country”—“were overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications.” Whatever these “race-neutral justifications” are, the court conveniently fails to elaborate.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas goes even further. He posits that the plaintiff’s suit would fail simply because “aliens have no equal protection rights against the Federal Government.” Constitutionally, this is painfully wrong. Morally, this is utterly disgusting.
In one fell swoop, the Supreme Court effectively cleared all legal obstacles against the Trump administration’s efforts to end TPS for anyone at any time for any reason. Their ruling renders non-constitutional challenges regarding policy adherence moot from the outset. And if Trump’s gross fearmongering about Haitians eating cats and dogs is not “overtly racial,” then it’s hard to imagine this Supreme Court acknowledging any of this administration’s blatant racism and xenophobia. Their willful ignorance renders the equal protection clause similarly moot.
Asylum Entries
To make matters worse, the Supreme Court was not done. In a separate decision, the court’s conservatives upheld the Trump administration’s “turn-back policy” (also known as “metering”) that allows federal agents at the US border to stop migrants from crossing into the US.
Currently, federal law permits any migrant “who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival […])” to apply for asylum. In Mulin v. Al Otro Lado, the Trump administration argued that their policy does not violate this law since, insofar as those migrants never step foot onto US soil, they never become entitled to apply for asylum in the first place.
The Supreme Court agreed. Writing again for the court’s majority, Alito claims that this case is “straightforward.” He writes, “In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person ‘arrives in’ a place—for example, a house, a city, or a country—before the person enters the place.”
The Trump administration does not cherish life. The Supreme Court does not value justice. Congress is now the last line of governmental defense against full-on fascism.
Yet, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor writes in her dissenting opinion, the majority’s fixation with the word “in” overlooks the broader context of the statute. Federal law dictates that any migrant “arriving” and “seeking admission” into the country “shall be inspected by immigration officers.” If they are ineligible for admission, they shall be removed unless they indicate “an intention to apply for asylum […] or a fear of persecution.” In that case, “the officer shall refer the alien for an interview.” That clause clearly applies to migrants who haven’t physically entered the US.
This also explains the language Congress uses in that statute. Under the majority’s reading, to “arrive in” the US is synonymous with being “physically present in” the US. But, if this is true, then why would Congress include both phrases if they were so obviously redundant? It’s because, in addition to being physically present, those who have arrived before an immigration official also have the right to apply for asylum even if they are not physically present in the US.
As Sotomayor bleakly remarks, “The consequences of today’s decision are predictable. More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not.”
This point not only underlines the cruelty of the policy, but also its sheer stupidity. Asylum-seekers brave horrible conditions, traveling hundreds if not thousands of miles away from their homes in search of a better life. Sotomayor is obviously correct that some will take the extra steps to enter the country by any means necessary. This is especially true if they believe that doing so is their only means of acquiring asylum. Trump’s policy undermines a system that would allow federal officials to screen migrants at the border, review their case, and provide them proper guidance for one that openly encourages the very kinds of “illegal entries” that his administration consistently bemoans as an existential threat to the nation.
Trump’s Humanitarian Crisis
With these decisions, the Supreme Court once again bends the knee to Trump’s vile agenda of violence and death. Eliminating humanitarian protections and denying asylum to those who need them most betray every value that makes this nation great.
What’s more, the court further exacerbates a humanitarian crisis that Trump is either intentionally or indifferently manufacturing. In his second term alone, he has either threatened or attacked 15 countries including Greenland, Venezuela, Somalia, and Syria; launched over 60 military strikes in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean that have killed over 200 people; eliminated the US Agency for International Development (USAID)—an act that could lead to 9.4 million deaths by 2030; launched an illegal war that has killed more than 7,300 people in Iran and Lebanon; a war that has also wrecked the global economy and caused fuel and food shortages in the world’s poorest and most remote areas; has consistently aided and supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza; imposed a total oil blockade that is economically asphyxiating Cuba; and has made refugee status in the US a privilege nearly-exclusive to white South Africans (who he claims—without evidence—are facing “racially motivated violence”), among many other similarly insidious and corrupted acts.
Our best option is to empower Congress to stand up against both the Trump administration and his Supreme Court by working to elect as many progressive candidates in November.
In short, the Trump administration does not cherish life. The Supreme Court does not value justice. Congress is now the last line of governmental defense against full-on fascism.
Fortunately, even Republicans understand the gravity of this situation. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), for instance, has already called for Congress to extend TPS for Haitians. For all of Trump’s bigotry, migrants remain an indispensable part of the US economy.
Ultimately, we need extensions for every group under threat from the Supreme Court’s reckless decisions as well as new protections for those who have already lost their TPS designations. For now, our best option is to empower Congress to stand up against both the Trump administration and his Supreme Court by working to elect as many progressive candidates in November. Before things get worse, we need fighters in Congress that will serve the people’s interest and stand up to Trump and his cronies.
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There's No Doubt: The Supreme Court Is Part of Trump's Anti-Democracy Movement
Even in the face of two laws in which Congress instructed the executive branch to do certain things, a majority of the current Supreme Court—the abominable Roberts Court—has bent over backwards to ignore those laws.
Jun 26, 2026
The real way to read the immigration decisions the Supreme Court issued on Thursday is not to see them solely as losses for immigrants to the United States or the rights of immigrants. They are much larger losses. They are losses for the authority of Congress to have its laws fully executed by a president who doesn’t agree with them.
Markwayne Mullin vs. Al Otro Lado concerns a 1917 law that requires immigration officers to inspect noncitizens who arrive at ports of entry to determine whether they may enter the United States. Congress amended the law in the Refugee Act of 1980 to allow noncitizens fleeing persecution in their home country to apply for asylum as part of this inspection process.
The act lays out a required set of procedures to guide this process. It says that a noncitizen who seeks admission to the United States “may apply for asylum.” If the noncitizen lacks valid travel documents, the officer “shall order [her] removed” unless she conveys an intention to apply for asylum or a fear of persecution, which in turn requires the officer to “refer” her for further processing of her asylum application.
This system is designed to ensure that the US government considers the application of each person seeking to come into the United States to determine who should be let in, who should be turned away, and who should be allowed to apply for asylum.
This must be seen for what it really is—a systemic effort by the six Republican appointees on the court to shrink congressional authority and enlarge the authority of the executive branch.
But on Thursday, the Supreme Court’s majority held that a president may circumvent these requirements simply by having US immigration officers stand at the border and physically block noncitizens from setting foot on US soil—even if the asylum-seeker is certain to be persecuted, or killed, if she is turned away.
What happened to the Refugee Act of 1980 and the specific procedures outlined in it? The Supreme Court ignored it.
The other decision released today, Markwayne Mullin vs. Dahlia Doe, concerns another law, part of the Immigration Act of 1990 called Temporary Protected Status. For over a decade administrations have provided humanitarian Temporary Protected Status relief to Haitian and Syrian nationals coming to the United States.
Today, the Supreme Court’s majority held that federal courts may not review the Secretary of Homeland Security’s compliance with that law. But in fact the Immigration Act of 1990 specifically allows judicial review of whether the secretary adhered to the procedures the law requires—exactly what the plaintiffs disputed.
It would be easy to see these two cases solely through the lens of immigration—and conclude that the Supreme Court’s decisions Thursday simply backed President Donald Trump and his fanatical underling Stephen Miller’s commitment to block noncitizens from the United States or to force them out. And surely these are the consequences of both of the rulings.
But the decisions are even darker and more dangerous than this. Even in the face of two laws in which Congress instructed the executive branch to do certain things, a majority of the current Supreme Court—the abominable Roberts Court—has bent over backwards to ignore those laws.
This must be seen for what it really is—a systemic effort by the six Republican appointees on the court to shrink congressional authority and enlarge the authority of the executive branch.
If there was any doubt before, there should be none now: The Supreme Court is part of the anti-democracy movement led by Trump and the billionaires behind him.
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'Heartbreaking, Terrible Decision': Supreme Court Validates Trump Attack on TPS
"Hundreds of thousands of people who hold legal status... now face losing their ability to work and being torn from their families and homes."
Jun 25, 2026
The US Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the Trump administration to deport hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian residents from the US after stripping them of their Temporary Protected Status last year.
In a 6-3 decision, the high court's conservative majority ruled that the Department of Homeland Security was able to strip status from 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians—including many who'd lived in the US for years—after they'd been given protection because DHS deemed their home countries unsafe to return to.
"Hundreds of thousands of people who hold legal status, who registered with the government, passed background checks, and paid fees to do so, now face losing their ability to work and being torn from their families and homes," explained Todd Schulte, the president of the immigration and criminal justice reform advocacy group Fwd.US.
A federal judge temporarily delayed the administration’s TPS terminations in February, blocking what advocates feared would be a flood of immigration agents to areas with many TPS recipients. The judge said DHS had not followed the legally required steps to determine whether Haiti and Syria were safe enough for people with temporary status to return.
The State Department currently advises Americans not to visit either country for any reason, as Haiti is in the midst of a brutal gang war that has displaced more than 1.4 million people, and Syria has been in an ongoing state of unrest since the civil war began in 2011.
Echoing the lower court, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan pointed out in her dissenting opinion that the only consultation within DHS on the conditions in these countries took place in a brief email exchange between a DHS aide and a State Department official, who said that there were no "foreign policy concerns" with terminating their status, but provided no evidence to declare that the two countries were safe.
The justice likewise noted that the stripping of status for Haitians was likely arbitrary and unconstitutional, based in part on "racial animus." She noted that President Donald Trump has made many statements about Haitians "so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print."
Kagan listed several of them, including Trump's nonsensical rant that Haitians were "eating the pets" of residents in Springfield, Ohio; his claim that Haitians living in the US “probably have AIDS"; and his description of Haiti as a "shithole country." She also noted his comments about immigrants more broadly, including that they are "poisoning the blood" of the nation.
"The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the president’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country," Kagan wrote.
In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito sidestepped the question of whether DHS has properly considered the conditions in Haiti and Syria, stating that the TPS statute allows "no judicial review of any determination... with respect to the... termination” of a designation. He said that meant the court could not review either the final decision to terminate status or any of the individual decisions leading up to it.
He did acknowledge the question of racial animus and admitted that things Trump has said "would have scandalized the public just a short time ago." But, he said that “none of the cited statements" from Trump were "overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications.”
The Trump administration has declined to renew TPS for all 13 countries for which it has come up for renewal during his second term. Alito said that since the administration has declined to renew TPS for every country, not just Haiti, the evidence was "insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people.”
Thursday's ruling was yet another validation of Trump's efforts to end TPS by the Supreme Court, which last year ruled that he could similarly strip status from around 350,000 Venezuelan nationals.
But advocates have pointed out that the administration's case this time was substantially weaker.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said it was "very important for people to understand that the Trump administration did not win a decision today saying that they had lawfully ended TPS."
"Instead," he said, "what the Supreme Court held was that even if the Trump administration had openly ignored the law in making TPS decisions, courts cannot stop them."
Nicolette Glazer, a California-based immigration attorney, said the court had basically determined that "a DHS secretary can end TPS at whim and neither statutory nor constitutional theory applies to curb administrative xenophobia."
"Make no mistake about what this is," said Amina Barhumi, the executive director of the Muslim Civic Coalition. "Temporary Protected Status exists because it is not safe to send people back to war and disaster. This decision does not change those dangers—it simply turns its back on the people fleeing them."
Schulte said it was a "heartbreaking, terrible decision that defies common sense." He added that "the administration simply broke the law in the way it terminated TPS." Now, he said, the lives of "hundreds of thousands of people who have lived here for decades... are in chaos."
While the Trump administration has often portrayed immigrants and refugees as parasites, Schulte argued that the "economic damage" of the decision would be felt far beyond the families facing deportation.
"Haitian TPS holders contribute nearly $6 billion to the US economy each year, and 200,000 of them work in industries already facing labor shortages, including healthcare, agriculture, and manufacturing," he said. "An estimated 25,000 US citizen children of Haitian TPS holders will be pushed into poverty when their parents lose work authorization. Employers will lose trained, dedicated workers they cannot easily replace. The real-life impact of this ruling is profound, cruel, and heartbreaking."
Some members of Congress pledged to take action to defend TPS recipients in light of the decision.
Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) called on Congress to pass the American Dream and Promise Act, which would create pathways to permanent legal status for TPS holders, as well as holders of the similar Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), and those who were brought to the US unauthorized as children and received protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
"TPS holders followed the rules. They registered with the government, passed background checks, renewed their status, worked legally, paid taxes, and raised their families here," Garcia said. "Their reward should not be a deportation notice."
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who spoke outside the court on Thursday, said the ruling showed that "the far-right MAGA majority on the court cannot stand." He said, "We need to win back the House and the Senate and expand the court."
"This is not over," Markey added. "It is our responsibility to protect TPS holders and provide this vulnerable group with a pathway to permanent citizenship. I will not stop fighting."
Even Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), a strong supporter of Trump, said that while he "never disputed the ability" of Trump to end TPS, he "strongly disagree[d] with ending Haitian TPS at this time," saying that "the situation on the ground in Haiti is a humanitarian and political disaster and continues to warrant an extension."
Lawler noted that "roughly 1/3" of Haitian TPS holders "work in our healthcare system" and said "shutting off TPS will create a crisis" in hospitals, nursing homes, and for people with disabilities.
"I’m asking the administration to allow for an orderly process by which Haitian TPS holders can maintain their work authorization while their immigration cases are adjudicated over the next six months," he said, adding that the Senate should consider his legislation with Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY) to temporarily extend TPS protections.
He said the administration needed to "allow for a stable government to be established with a free and fair election, creating the conditions for a safe return for Haitians."
Rep. Analilia Mejia (D-NJ), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee and Border Security and Enforcement Subcommittee, said the TPS ruling, and another ruling on Thursday allowing the administration to turn back asylum seekers at legal points of entry, "should alarm every American."
"The 14th Amendment promises due process and equal protection under the law. Those rights do not disappear because a president decides an entire community has become politically convenient to target," she said. "When the government can deny one group a hearing or strip away protections they have relied on for years, it is not just immigrants who lose. It sends a dangerous message that constitutional rights can be discarded whenever those in power find it politically useful."
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