ICE begins deporting Haitians who lost TPS back to homeland
They are being sent to a place where more than 1.4 million Haitians have been internally displaced and much of the population is going hungry.
The first deportation flight to Haiti since the Trump administration ended humanitarian protections for 350,000 people living in the United States landed Thursday in the Caribbean nation, and activists say immigration arrests are beginning to ramp up.
The flight carrying 170 people, ranging in age from 19 to 71, landed in Cap-Haitien, on the northern coast of Haiti. Commercial flights from the U.S. have been blocked from landing in the Caribbean nation’s primary airport in the capital of Port-au-Prince due to gang activity and reports of aircraft being struck by gunfire.
The federal government has been sending deportees back to Haiti on monthly flights, but Thursday’s removal was among the largest that community leaders said they had seen during the second Trump administration.
Many of the passengers had been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the last three weeks, and at least one had recently lost temporary protected status, according to Guerline Jozef of the Haitian Bridge Alliance.
“People are losing TPS status and losing their asylum cases,” she said. “It’s become easier and easier to be taken and deported.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the deportation flight.
For months, Haitians have been bracing for ICE to begin making arrests en masse, although the new enforcement push has unfolded slowly and quietly so far.
DHS has placed ankle monitors on Haitians who have lost their protected status. Arrests have also been made in communities home to large numbers of people from the violence-ridden Caribbean nation.
The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to end humanitarian protections for Haitians in June, and in early August a federal judge took the final step in allowing the Trump administration to terminate the benefit for Haitians.
On Thursday, community leaders in Springfield, Ohio, said ICE arrested a well-known Christian pastor, Joubert Adrien. He was driving home when officers boxed in his vehicle at a gas station, the activists said. He had recently lost TPS, according to Vilés Dorsainvil of the Haitian Support Center.
The arrest has sent chills through Adrien’s congregation and the larger Haitian community, Dorsainvil added.
ICE officers have also been spotted making arrests over the last week in Springfield outside grocery stores and after traffic stops. Local residents and clergy members have been protesting the arrests, and a legal advocacy organization has been trying to help those detained.
Many Haitians in Springfield are now wondering if they will be the next to get arrested, community leaders said.
Springfield became a focal point during President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign after he falsely claimed that Haitian residents there were killing and eating their neighbors’ pets.
The city includes a large number of the country’s middle class who worked as physicians, judges, and in other professions in Haiti, Dorsainvil said. They moved to Ohio after the country was plunged into chaos following the 2021 assassination of the country’s then-president, he said.
“That’s why they left Haiti,” said Dorsainvil, himself a former TPS holder. “They were not looking for work. They left because they were at risk.”
But in Springfield they have worked factory jobs, filled healthcare vacancies, continued their university studies, and started businesses. Now, instead of using their skills to benefit U.S. communities, Dorsainvil said, they face the possibility of being sent back to a place where they recently had urgent reasons to flee.
Dorsainvil said he is fielding dozens of calls each day from terrified neighbors who tell of ICE visits to their homes. He heard from a woman on Thursday who couldn’t find her husband on ICE’s detainee locator website and was panicking, believing that he could be on the deportation flight.
Deportees from the U.S. are especially vulnerable to kidnapping, extortion, and murder once they land in Haiti, Jozef said. Criminals think they have been given money by the Trump administration to self-deport or have savings from their time stateside, he said.
U.S. military personnel who served in Haiti recently testified in Congress on the country’s gang crisis and characterized the nation as a conflict zone.
Top Haitian government security officials have been kidnapped by armed groups. More than 1.4 million Haitians have been internally displaced and much of the population is going hungry.
“This isn’t a country where anyone should be deported right now,” said Savi Arvey of Human Rights First, an advocacy group tracking deportation flights. “We are gravely concerned this administration seems poised to intentionally take legal status from people in service of its mass deportation campaign and intentionally and knowingly deporting people to danger.”