Revoking Haitians’ temporary immigration status is wrong and will hurt South Florida | Opinion

Half-a-million Haitians temporarily living in the United States were plunged into uncertainty this week when the Trump administration announced it was rolling back their extension of Temporary Protected Status, meaning they could lose their work permits and be eligible for deportation as soon as August.

It’s unclear how many Haitian TPS holders live in Florida but the state has one of the largest populations of Haitian Americans in the country, about 500,000, with the majority in South Florida. This move will devastate our friends and neighbors, our co-workers and employees and harm our economy. Democratic U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson of Miami called sending Haitians home amid the country’s turbulence a “kiss of death.”

Simmering apprehension is fast becoming a way of life here: The news about Haitians’ TPS came about three weeks after the administration’s gut-wrenching announcement that it would also revoke TPS for some 350,000 Venezuelans by April and another 257,000 by September.

In other parts of the country, talk of TPS may seem abstract and far away, part of the national conversation about immigration and the need to crack down on those who are in the United States illegally. But in Miami, this hits home. Hard.

We are community built, at least in recent times, by immigrants. Haitians and Venezuelans are an intrinsic part of our society. And people who are protected by TPS aren’t here illegally; they have temporary legal status awarded to them by the U.S. government. Yes, it is a temporary status, but conferring that status should be based on logic, not political gamesmanship.

This is, though, about politics. President Donald Trump came into office on the promise of deporting a million people. The TPS designation was extended by the Biden administration, so Trump is trying to erase it. In the process, he is undermining the word of the U.S. government. Our allies and enemies alike might well wonder: If we don’t keep our word about TPS from administration to administration, what other promises will we go back on?

For the government to simply change course when a new president takes office is unnecessarily cruel. These are human beings on TPS, not pawns. And they come from places in terrible turmoil.

TPS is a federal program that allows migrants from certain countries to temporarily live and work legally in the U.S. while conditions in their home countries are unsafe.

If there is any country in the world that should be eligible for the program, it’s Haiti. Armed gangs control up to 90% of metropolitan Port-au-Prince, the capital. Sexual violence is commonplace, used as a way to control the population. The U.S. has spent more than $620 million to support a United Nations-authorized multinational security mission, which is struggling to impose order.

There are shortages of food and an ongoing lack of medical supplies, with at least 70% of hospitals not functioning. There were at least four gang-related massacres last year, leading to the deaths of more than 5,600 Haitians.

Schools have shuttered, doctors and nurses have been kidnapped for ransom, electricity goes on and off and a million people have fled their homes to escape violence, as William G. O’Neill, a U.N. expert on human rights in Haiti, wrote in an opinion article for the Herald asking the U.S. to reconsider this TPS decision.

If that is not the case for TPS, what is?

The same argument has been made — by this Editorial Board — regarding TPS for Venezuela, where conditions under leader Nicolas Maduro have worsened, if anything.

The reasoning to allow Haitians to remain on TPS isn’t solely based on being humane, though. What happens when half-a-million people are suddenly deported? It’s hard to picture. Families would be divided. Businesses would suffer.

Scaling back TPS, as many Republicans want, is one thing; yanking it out from under people who already have it is another thing entirely. Sending Haitians back to their devastated and dangerous country is, sadly, all about politics, not based on any threat to the U.S. or any reality in Haiti. This decision must be revisited.

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This story was originally published February 21, 2025 at 4:43 PM.