The U.S. has deported more than 160 people to Haiti for the first time since the Trump administration won a legal battle to end Temporary Protected Status for some 350,000 Haitians CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti -- The U.S. deported more than 160 people to Haiti on Thursday for the first time since the Trump administration won a legal battle to end Temporary Protected Status for some 350,000 Haitians. The plane landed in the northern Haitian city of Cap-Haitien because the main international airport in Port-au-Prince is considered too dangerous. The U.S. government currently has a ban on U.S. commercial flights to Haiti’s capital through early September because of ongoing gang violence.
The deportees were clad in white, and many covered their faces out of safety as journalists filmed their arrival. Nearly all declined to talk, with some fearing being targeted by gangs that control an estimated 70% of Port-au-Prince and swaths of land beyond. The deportees included TPS holders and Haitians who had served prison sentences, said Jean Négot Bonheur Delva, director general of Haiti’s National Office of Migration.
He said that several deportees planned to travel to Haiti’s southern region, a dangerous journey because gangs control the main routes leading to that area and are known to randomly open fire on vehicles passing through. Others are going to Haiti's western region, he said. He said the government would attempt to reunify him with any potential relatives in Haiti or the Dominican Republic, where his mother and father live.
Immigration officials in Haiti on Thursday offered deportees a maximum of $65 and something to drink and eat. Delva did not say how many of the 161 deportees were TPS holders who had been living and working legally in the U.S. since 2010. Supreme Court allowed the TPS program to end, affecting some 1 million people from more than a dozen countries.
The cases went back to the lower courts, but by late July, the government had not extended work permits for Haitians. On Aug. 5, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., lifted an order preventing deportations of Haitians on Temporary Protected Status, which was effectively a formality after the Supreme Court ruling in June. Activists have warned that Haiti is currently too dangerous and doesn’t have enough resources to help those being deported to a country of nearly 12 million people, of which more than half need humanitarian assistance because of surging gang violence and deepening poverty, hunger and violence.
Gang violence already has displaced a record 1.5 million people across Haiti, where more than 3,100 people were reported killed from January to June and another 1,189 injured, according to U.N. statistics. One deportee briefly spoke to The as he arrived in Cap-Haitien. He identified himself as Jean Diane Louis and said he left Haiti when he was 5 years old.
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