300,000 Haitians Facing Deportation as TPS Expires

Hundreds of thousands of Haitian nationals are facing deportation after their Temporary Protected Status (TPS) expired on Monday, July 27. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is reportedly preparing to ramp up operations targeting TPS Haitians who choose not to self-deport.

The development comes after the Supreme Court reversed a lower-court ruling that blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from terminating TPS for migrants from Haiti and Syria.

TPS Expiration Enforcement

Reports suggest at least 300,000 Haitian nationals lost TPS on Monday, and now ICE has its eyes on Ohio, especially the city of Springfield, where thousands of people from Haiti settled in recent years. Immigration authorities plan to launch a “deportation blitz focused on Haitian migrants as early as this week,” CBS News reported.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, condemned ICE’s reported plans, insisting such operations would be “a blow to Springfield” and “a blow to the state of Ohio.”

“These are people who have helped Springfield really come back,” DeWine claimed. “The Haitians who are living there and employed there, they came there to work, and they came there because there were jobs that were not being filled by other people.”

Ah, that old chestnut: The US needs illegal immigrants, you see, because Americans won’t do certain jobs. But then shouldn’t there be entire occupations dominated by foreign-born workers? The Center for Immigration Studies, an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research group, gave this dead horse some relief back in 2018:

“[A]mong the 474 separate occupations defined by the Department of Commerce, we find only a handful of majority-immigrant occupations, and none completely dominated by immigrants (legal or illegal). Furthermore, in none of the 474 occupations do illegal immigrants constitute a majority of workers.”

Illegal immigrants typically work in construction, maintenance, cleaning, garment manufacturing, food service, and agriculture, the center explained,  but “the majority of workers even in these areas are either native-born or legal immigrants.”

“There are no occupations in the United States in which a majority of workers are illegal immigrants,” it added.

The T Stands for Temporary

As reports of a major ICE operation targeting Haitian migrants circulated, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted on X, “Temporary protected status is exactly that — TEMPORARY. For those with terminated TPS: it’s closing time. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

The department urged migrants facing the expiration of their TPS protections to accept a $2,600 payment and a free flight back to their home countries.

Haiti was originally granted temporary protected status when the nation was devastated by an earthquake in 2010. The designation allowed Haitian TPS beneficiaries to live, work, and travel in the US without the threat of deportation until former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “determined that Haiti no longer met the conditions” to qualify for TPS.

DHS secretaries can grant TPS to nationals of countries affected by armed conflict, environmental disasters, or “other extraordinary and temporary conditions.” The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website states that “TPS is a temporary benefit that does not lead to lawful permanent resident status or give any other immigration status.”

Haitians who have lived in the United States under TPS have had as many as 16 years to find a permanent, legal path to remain in the US or find another place to go. The United States is not the world’s soup kitchen; it is a nation with a responsibility to its own people. However difficult Haiti’s circumstances may be, struggling Americans should not be forced to sacrifice their own resources or shoulder the cost of caring for the rest of the world.