Haitian

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — An Ohio city whose Haitian migrants were disparaged by a Donald Trump falsehood last year as he pitched voters on his plans for an immigration crackdown is now bracing to defend the community against possible deportation.

A group of about 100 community members, clergy and Haitian leaders in Springfield gathered this week for several days of training sessions as they prepare to defend potential deportees and provide them refuge.

“We feel that this is something that our faith requires, that people of faith are typically law-abiding people — that’s who we want to be — but if there are laws that are unjust, if there are laws that don’t respect human dignity, we feel that our commitment to Christ requires that we put ourselves in places where we may face some of the same threats,” said Carl Ruby, senior pastor of Central Christian Church.

Ruby said the ultimate goal of the group is to persuade the Trump administration to reverse its decision to terminate legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status, or TPS.

“One way of standing with the Haitians is getting out the message of how much value they bring to the city of Springfield,” he said. “It would be an absolute disaster if we lost 10,000 of our best workers overnight because their TPS ends and they can no longer work.”

In lieu of that, Ruby said, participants in the effort are learning how to help Haitians in other ways. That includes building relationships, accompanying migrants to appointments with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and providing their families with physical shelter.

A speaker addresses a training session July 29, 2025, at Central Christian Church in Springfield, Ohio, which advised community and church leaders on how to support and shelter immigrants facing deportation.

(Obed Lamy / Associated Press)

A city in the crosshairs

Springfield found itself in an unwelcome spotlight last year after Trump amplified false rumors during a presidential debate that members of the mid-size city’s burgeoning Haitian population were abducting and eating cats and dogs. It was the type of inflammatory and anti-immigrant rhetoric he promoted throughout his campaign.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in June that it would terminate TPS as soon as Sept. 2 for about 500,000 Haitians who are already in the United States, some of whom have lived here for more than a decade. The department said conditions in the island nation have improved adequately to allow their safe return. The United Nations contradicts that assertion, saying that the economic and humanitarian crisis in Haiti has only worsened with the Trump administration’s cuts in foreign aid.

The announcement came three months after the administration revoked legal protections for thousands of Haitians who arrived legally in the United States under a humanitarian parole program as part of a series of measures implemented to curb immigration. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal judge’s order preventing the administration from revoking the parole program.

Last month, a federal judge in New York blocked the administration from accelerating an end to Haitians’ TPS protections, which the Biden administration had extended through at least Feb. 3, 2026, citing gang violence, political unrest, a major earthquake in 2021 and other factors.

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said at the time that the Trump administration would eventually prevail and that its predecessors treated TPS like a “de facto asylum program.” In the meantime, the government has set the expiration date back to early February.

TPS allows people already in the United States to stay and work legally if their homelands are deemed unsafe. Immigrants from 17 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and Lebanon, were receiving those protections before Trump took office for his second term in January.

Participants hold a discussion in a breakout session during a training hosted by the group Undivided at Central Christian Church in Springfield, Ohio, aimed at teaching community and church leaders how to support and shelter immigrants facing deportation July 29, 2025.

(Obed Lamy / Associated Press)

Residents ponder next steps

Charla Weiss, a founding member of Undivided, the group that hosted the Springfield workshop, said participants were asked the question of how far they would go to help Haitian residents avoid deportation.

“The question that I know was before me is, how far am I willing to go to support my passion about the unlawful detainment and deportation of Haitians, in particular here in Springfield?” she said.

Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a longtime supporter of the Haitian community, was briefed by Springfield leaders during a visit to the city Friday. He told reporters that the state is bracing for the potential of mass layoffs in the region as a result of the TPS policy change, a negative for the workers and the companies that employ them.

“It’s not going to be good,” he said.

Lamy and Smyth write for the Associated Press and reported from Springfield and Columbus, Ohio, respectively.

July 22 (UPI) — The Trump administration has said it will deport Haitian nationals with permanent resident status in the United States who are accused of supporting or collaborating with gangs the White House has labeled foreign terrorist organizations.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the announcement in a statement Monday, saying the actions of these Haitian individuals and their presence in the United States have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”

Neither the identities of the Haitian nationals to be deported nor the number to be expelled from the country were made public, though U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Monday announced the arrest of Haitian national Pierre Reginald Boulos. The Miami Herald reported that Boulos, 69, is an American-born entrepreneur, physician and influential political powerbroker in Haiti.

ICE said Boulos was arrested Thursday for violating the Immigration and Nationality Act for contributing to the destabilization of Haiti.

“Specifically, officials determined that he engaged in a campaign of violence and gang support that contributed to Haiti’s destabilization,” ICE said in the statement.

“Additionally, in his application to become a lawful permanent resident, he failed to disclose his involvement in the formation of a political party in Haiti, Mouvement pour la Transformation et la Valorisation d’Haiti, and that he was referred for prosecution by the Haitian government’s unit for the Fight Against Corruption for misusing loans, supporting an additional ground of removability based on this fraud.”

Rubio’s statement, which was made public following the announcement of Boulos’ arrest, says they have determined some Haitians with permanent resident status have supported or worked with Haitian gang leaders connected to Viv Ansanm, an organization that the State Department declared a Foreign Terrorist Organization in May, calling it “a primary source of instability and violence in Haiti.”

“The United States will not allow individuals to enjoy the benefits of legal status in our country while they are facilitating the actions of violent organizations or supporting criminal terrorist organizations,” Rubio said Monday.

The announcement comes as the Trump administration seeks to conduct mass deportations. As part of its efforts to fulfill the Trump administration’s goal, the State Department has used the Immigration and Nationality Act to impose visa restrictions on foreign nationals and deport others.

Move comes after Trump administration labeled Haiti’s Viv Ansanm gang a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’.

The administration of President Donald Trump has said it will deport Haitians living in the United States as legal permanent residents if they are deemed to have “supported and collaborated” with a Haitian gang.

The announcement on Monday is the latest move against Haitians living in the US amid the president’s mass deportation drive, and comes as the Trump administration has sought to end two other legal statuses for Haitians.

The update also comes as rights groups are questioning how the Trump administration determines connections to organisations it deems “terrorist organisations”.

In a statement, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not reveal how many people were being targeted or any names, saying only that “certain individuals with US lawful permanent resident status have supported and collaborated with Haitian gang leaders connected to Viv Ansanm”.

Following the determination, the Department of Homeland Security can pursue the deportation of the lawful permanent residents, also known as green-card holders, Rubio added.

As the Trump administration has sought to ramp up deportations, the State Department has been invoking broad powers under the Immigration and Nationality Act to attempt to deport people living in the US on various visas, including as permanent legal residents or students.

Under the law, the state secretary can expel anyone whose presence in the US is deemed to have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.

The administration has sought to deport four people under the law for their pro-Palestine advocacy, which the State Department repeatedly equated, without evidence, to anti-Semitism and support for the “terrorist”-designated group Hamas.

All four people are challenging their deportations and arrests in immigration and federal courts.

In the statement regarding Haitians on Monday, Rubio said the US “will not allow individuals to enjoy the benefits of legal status in our country while they are facilitating the actions of violent organisations or supporting criminal terrorist organisations”.

In May, the State Department labelled the Viv Ansanm and Gran Grif gangs “foreign terrorist organisations”, calling them a “direct threat to US national security interests in our region”.

That followed the February designation of eight Latin American criminal groups as “terrorist organisations”, including the Venezuelan-based Tren de Aragua.

The administration has used alleged affiliation with the gang to justify swiftly deporting Venezuelans living in the US without documentation under an 18th-century wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act.

Critics have said the removal flouted due process, with court documents indicating that some of the affected men were targeted for nothing more than tattoos or clothing said to be associated with the group.

Haitians singled out

The Haitian community living in the US has been prominently targeted by Trump, first during his campaign, when he falsely accused Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, of “eating” pets.

Since taking office, the administration has sought to end several legal statuses for Haitians, including a special humanitarian parole programme under former President Joe Biden, under which more than 200,000 Haitians legally entered the US.

In May, the US Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end the special status.

The Trump administration has also sought to end temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitians, a legal status granted to those already living in the US whose home countries are deemed unsafe to return to.

In late June, despite the violent crime crisis gripping Haiti, US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem declared that the Caribbean nation no longer met the conditions for TPS.

However, earlier this month, a federal judge blocked the administration from prematurely halting the programme before its currently scheduled end in February 2026.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced last month that temporary protected status for about 5,000 Haitians would end Sept. 2, five months earlier than planned. The Trump administration has cited flawed and contradictory assessments of conditions in Haiti — which, make no mistake, remains unsafe.

Although a U.S. district court halted the action — at least temporarily — and reinstated the original termination date of Feb. 3, the administration is likely to challenge the ruling. The outcome of such a challenge could hinge on whether the courts receive and believe an accurate representation of current events in Haiti.

The administration asserts that “overall, country conditions have improved to the point where Haitians can return home in safety.” Nothing could be further from the truth. But few outsiders are entering and leaving the country lately, so the truth can be hard to ascertain.

In late April and early May, as a researcher for Human Rights Watch, I traveled to the northern city of Cap-Haïtien. For the first time in the several years I have been working in Haiti, violence kept me from reaching the capital, Port-au-Prince, where the airport remains under a Federal Aviation Administration ban since November when gangs shot Spirit, JetBlue and American Airlines passenger jets in flight.

In Cap-Haïtien, I spoke with dozens of people who fled the capital and other towns in recent months. Many shared accounts of killings, injuries from stray bullets and gang rapes by criminal group members.

“We were walking toward school when we saw the bandits shooting at houses, at people, at everything that moved,” a 27-year-old woman, a student from Port-au-Prince, told me. “We started to run back, but that’s when [my sister] Guerline fell face down. She was shot in the back of the head, then I saw [my cousin] Alice shot in the chest.” The student crawled under a car, where she hid for hours. She fled the capital in early January.

This rampant violence is precisely the sort of conditions Congress had in mind when it passed the temporary protected status law in 1990. It recognized a gap in protection for situations in which a person might not be able to establish that they have been targeted for persecution on the basis of their beliefs or identity — the standard for permanent asylum claims — but rather when a person’s life is at real risk because of high levels of generalized violence that make it too dangerous for anyone to be returned to the place.

When an administration grants this designation, it does so for a defined period, which can be extended based on conditions in the recipients’ home country. For instance, protected status for people from Somalia was first designated in 1991 and has been extended repeatedly, most recently through March 17, 2026.

Almost 1.3 million people are internally displaced in Haiti. They flee increasing violence by criminal groups that killed more than 5,600 people in 2024 — 23% more than in 2023. Some analysts say the country has the highest homicide rate in the world. Criminal groups control nearly 90% of the capital and have expanded into other places.

Perversely, the Department of Homeland Security publicly concedes this reality, citing in a Federal Register notification “widespread gang violence” as a reason for terminating temporary protected status. The government argues that a “breakdown in governance” makes Haiti unable to control migration, and so a continued designation to protect people from there would not be in the “national interests” of the United States.

Even judging on that criterion alone, revoking the legal status of Haitians in the U.S. is a bad idea. Sending half a million people into Haiti would be highly destabilizing and counter to U.S. interests — not to mention that their lives would be at risk.

The Trump administration has taken no meaningful action to improve Haiti’s situation. The Kenya-led multinational security support mission, authorized by the U.N. Security Council and initially backed by the United States, has been on the ground for a year. Yet because of severe shortages of personnel, resources and funding, it has failed to provide the support the Haitian police desperately need. In late February, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres recommended steps to strengthen the mission, but the Security Council has yet to act.

The humanitarian situation in Haiti continues to deteriorate. An estimated 6 million people need humanitarian assistance. Nearly 5.7 million face acute hunger.

On June 26, just one day before Homeland Security’s attempt to end Haitians’ protected status prematurely, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau described the ongoing crisis in Haiti as “disheartening.” He said that “public order has all but collapsed” as “Haiti descends into chaos.” Two days earlier, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti issued a security alert urging U.S. citizens in the country to “depart as soon as possible.” These are not indications that “country conditions have improved to the point where Haitians can return home in safety,” as Homeland Security claimed on June 27.

The decision to prematurely end temporary protected status is utterly disconnected from reality. The Trump administration itself has warned that Haiti remains dangerous — and if anything has become more so in recent months. The U.S. government should continue to protect Haitians now living in the United States from being thrown into the brutal violence unfolding in their home country.

Nathalye Cotrino is a senior Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch.

NEW YORK — A federal judge in New York on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from ending temporary legal status for more than 500,000 Haitians who are already in the United States.

District Court Judge Brian M. Cogan in New York ruled that moving up the expiration of the temporary protected status, or TPS, by at least five months for Haitians, some of whom have lived in the U.S. for more than a decade, is unlawful.

The Biden administration had extended Haiti’s TPS status through at least Feb. 3, 2026, due to gang violence, political unrest, a major earthquake in 2021 and several other factors, according to court documents.

But last week, the Department of Homeland Security announced it was terminating those legal protections as soon as Sept. 2, setting Haitians up for potential deportation. The department said the conditions in the country had improved and Haitians no longer met the conditions for the temporary legal protections.

The ruling comes as President Trump works to end protections and programs for immigrants as part of his mass deportations promises.

The judge’s 23-page opinion states that the Department of Homeland Security’s move to terminate the legal protections early violates the TPS statute that requires a certain amount of notice before reconsidering a designation.

“When the Government confers a benefit over a fixed period of time, a beneficiary can reasonably expect to receive that benefit at least until the end of that fixed period,” according to the ruling.

The judge also referenced the fact that the plaintiffs have started jobs, enrolled in schools and begun receiving medical treatment with the expectations that the country’s TPS designation would run through the end of the year.

Manny Pastreich, president of the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, which filed the lawsuit, described the ruling as an “important step” but said the fight is not over.

“We will keep fighting to make sure this decision is upheld,” Pastreich said in a statement. “We will keep fighting for the rights of our members and all immigrants against the Trump Administration – in the streets, in the workplace, and in the courts as well. And when we fight, we win.”

DHS did not immediately respond to an email from the Associated Press requesting comment. But the government had argued that TPS is a temporary program and thus “the termination of a country’s TPS designation is a possibility beneficiaries must always expect.”

Haiti’s TPS status was initially activated in 2010 after the catastrophic earthquake and has been extended multiple times, according to the lawsuit.

Gang violence has displaced 1.3 million people across Haiti as the local government and international community struggle with the spiraling crisis, according to a report from the International Organization for Migration. There has been a 24% increase in displaced people since December, with gunmen having chased 11% of Haiti’s nearly 12 million inhabitants from their home, the report said.

In May, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to strip Temporary Protected Status from 350,000 Venezuelans, potentially exposing them to deportation. The order put on hold a ruling from a federal judge in San Francisco that kept the legal protections in place.

The judge’s decision in New York also comes on the heels of the Trump administration revoking legal protections for thousands of Haitians who arrived legally in the U.S. through a humanitarian parole program.

The Department of Homeland Security says the gang-riddled Caribbean country is safe enough for Haitians to return.

The United States government has announced it will terminate special protections for Haitian immigrants.

In a statement issued Friday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that, starting on September 2, Haitians would no longer be able to remain in the country under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation.

TPS allows nationals from countries facing conflict, natural disaster or other extraordinary circumstances to temporarily remain in the US. It also gives them the right to work and travel.

The designation is typically made for periods of six, 12 or 18 months, but that can be extended by the DHS secretary.

But under the administration of President Donald Trump, temporary protections like TPS have been pared back, as part of a broader push to limit immigration to the US.

“This decision restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that Temporary Protective Status is actually temporary,” a DHS spokesperson said in Friday’s statement.

Haiti first received the TPS designation in 2010, when a devastating earthquake killed more than 200,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless – more than a 10th of the population. The designation has been routinely extended and expanded, particularly as gang violence and political instability worsened in recent years.

Since his first term in office, from 2017 to 2021, President Trump has sought to strip TPS for Haitians, even as conditions have deteriorated in the Caribbean island nation.

Today, Haiti faces a protracted humanitarian crisis, with more than 5,600 people killed by gangs last year and 1.3 million displaced. Armed groups now control up to 90 percent of the capital, and food, water and medical services are extremely difficult to come by.

The US Department of State has placed a travel advisory on Haiti, listing it as a Level 4 country, the highest warning level.

Level 4 signifies “do not travel”, as there are life-threatening conditions in the designated area. The State Department advises Americans to avoid Haiti “due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and limited health care”.

The DHS statement, however, notes that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem “determined that, overall, country conditions have improved to the point where Haitians can return home in safety”.

“She further determined that permitting Haitian nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to the national interest of the United States,” the statement adds.

An estimated 260,000 Haitians have TPS. The statement advises that those affected can either pursue another immigration status or return home.

But Haitians are not the only group to face the revocation of their temporary immigration status.

In early May, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to revoke TPS for 350,000 Venezuelans living in the US.

Later in the month, the high court also ruled that Trump can revoke the two-year “humanitarian parole” that allowed 530,000 people to legally remain and work in the US. The affected humanitarian parole recipients included Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans, all of whom face instability and political repression in their home countries.

Trump officials have also moved to end TPS for 7,600 Cameroonians and 14,600 Afghans. But critics note that fighting continues to rage in Cameroon, and in Afghanistan, the Taliban government is accused of perpetrating widespread human rights abuses.

The Dominican Republic has deported nearly 150,000 people it claims are of Haitian descent since October 2024. Many of them are unaccompanied minors or people born in the Dominican Republic but stripped of citizenship in 2013. While officials say they are enforcing immigration laws, a recent Al Jazeera documentary points to a deeper history of anti-Blackness and anti-Haitian sentiment on the island.

May 30 (UPI) — More than 200,000 undocumented migrants have left the Dominican Republic this year, including at least 145,000 Haitians deported by immigration authorities.

The figure marks a 70% increase from the same period last year and is part of a plan by President Luis Abinader and the National Security and Defense Council to reduce the number of undocumented migrants in the country.

The Dominican Republic’s General Directorate of Migration has stepped up immigration operations and deportations of Haitians since October 2024, when a new immigration law took effect.

International organizations have raised concerns about the impact deportations have had on the Haitian community in the Dominican Republic. Many people now live in fear of being detained and expelled, which has limited their access to basic services such as healthcare and education.

The Caribbean nation has barred entry to pregnant Haitian women in their third trimester, saying its healthcare system cannot cover the cost of childbirth for undocumented foreigners.

The United Nations condemned the deportation of 900 pregnant or breastfeeding Haitian women from the Dominican Republic in recent months.

U.N. Secretary-General spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the International Organization for Migration provided assistance at the border to an average of 30 such women each month during their deportation, calling the practice a violation of international standards.

Dujarric added that nearly 20,000 Haitians were repatriated from the Dominican Republic between April and May 2025, the highest number on record for that time period.

The Dominican Republic has tightened its immigration policy by partially closing its border with Haiti and building a 160-kilometer border wall equipped with sensors, cameras and watchtowers. The government said the measures aim to curb irregular migration, smuggling and insecurity.

The DGM defended the immigration operations, saying they comply with human rights standards.

“Our actions are carried out with strict respect for the fundamental rights of those involved, ensuring dignified treatment, proper safety and hygiene conditions, and due process in accordance with national and international human rights standards,” the agency said in a press release.

Haiti is facing one of the worst crises in its recent history, marked by widespread violence from armed gangs that control more than 80% of Port-au-Prince. These groups have carried out attacks on public institutions, mass killings, and prison breaks, displacing more than 1 million people and leaving the transitional government, led by the Presidential Transitional Council under Fritz Alphonse Jean, in collapse.

The insecurity has overwhelmed Haiti’s health system, forcing hospital closures, driving medical professionals to flee the country, and triggering outbreaks of diseases such as cholera. The crisis is compounded by severe food insecurity, with more than 5 million people struggling to access adequate food and thousands living in famine conditions.