Trump administration cuts immigration protections for 500,000 Haitians

The Trump administration cut immigration protections for half a million Haitians in the United States, setting them on track for deportation by this summer, according to government documents and a Department of Homeland Security official cited by The New York Times.

Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem revoked an 18-month extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) granted by former Democratic President Joe Biden just before he left office. With this decision, these protections are now set to expire next August instead of February 2026, leaving 500,000 Haitians exposed to President Trump's mass deportation plan.

The move represents President Trump's latest move against immigration programs expanded by Biden, who had granted several mass migrant groups different possibilities to "legally" enter the United States at a time when illegal border crossings were saturating the borders.

However, critics of these programs claim that the Biden administration "broke" the system, subverting and damaging the original design and purpose of the immigration programs that the Democratic president expanded.

TPS, mainly, is a decades-old program for immigrants from different countries. It is intended to help those who cannot safely and immediately return to their places of origin due to natural disasters or armed conflict, as is the case of Haiti, a country that in the past suffered harsh consequences from tsunamis and is now in the midst of a political crisis following the uprising of criminal gangs.

In fact, according to the United Nations, last year, more than 5,000 Haitians died as a result of armed violence and another 300,000 were displaced by insecurity.

Currently, more than 500,000 Haitians in the United States are eligible for TPS.

Now, following the revocation of the extension, Noem will have several months to consider whether to remove protections for Haitians altogether, a move that, right now, seems likely.

Haitians are not the only mass migrant group that has been affected by TPS revocations. In January, the Trump administration announced that Venezuelan immigrants would lose their protected status starting in April, directly affecting 600,000 people who thought they would be not only protected from deportation but also with work permits until mid-2026.

However, the Trump administration's TPS revocations will face several legal challenges from immigrant advocacy organizations that consider the measures illegal.

"Venezuela is in crisis. Even Trump admits that. The influx of Venezuelans to the United States due to their country’s humanitarian crisis is exactly the reason that T.P.S. exists," Emi MacLean, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, an organization that is challenging the Trump administration on various immigration measures, told the NYT.