Courtesy of James Pierre and Houston Haitians United
Members of Houston Haitians United participated in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Houston in 2023.
Haitian immigrants in Houston feel a sense of “ominous uncertainty,” even after a federal judge this week blocked an attempt by the Trump administration to end their temporary protected status (TPS) months earlier than expected.
Last year, the Biden administration extended TPS for Haitian immigrants through Feb. 3, 2026, because of gang violence and political unrest in the small country on an island in the Caribbean Sea. However, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced last week it would end TPS for Haitians five months earlier, on Sept. 2.
Judge Brian M. Cogan of the Eastern District of New York blocked that attempt Tuesday, ruling the early termination of their protected status is unlawful.
“Though grateful for this temporary reprieve, it is evident that the Haitian community does not expect better news come (February),” said Dorothy Dupuy, a community affairs advisor for Houston Haitians United.
“There is still an ominous uncertainty about the fate of TPS holders,” she added.
There are hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants in the U.S. Cogan’s ruling means Haitians under temporary protected status can retain that status through Feb. 3, 2026 as granted by the Biden administration – at least for now.
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After a federal judge in California rejected a similar bid to terminate TPS for 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants, the Supreme Court in May allowed the Trump administration to strip them of their status, meaning they could be deported, according to the Associated Press.
In a statement after Cogan’s ruling, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Haiti’s TPS was “never intended to be a de facto asylum program” and that the Trump administration expects a “higher court to vindicate us in this.”
Haitian immigrants in the U.S. were initially granted TPS in 2010 after a devastating earthquake in their home country. The protection was extended because of the violence and political instability there.
Cogan agreed with lawyers representing Haitian immigrants that they would “suffer irreparable injury” from losing protection five months earlier than expected. The court emphasized the harm comes from the shortening of the extension, not from “any eventual termination of Haiti’s TPS designation made in accordance with the law.”
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“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,” Cogan wrote in his ruling.
According to the DHS, the “situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home.” But the U.S. Department of State has a “do not travel” advisory for Haiti because of “kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and limited health care.”
“For the Trump administration to say the reason behind the TPS being lifted is because the situation in Haiti is getting better, is being dishonest to the American people,” said James Pierre, a co-founder of Houston Haitian United.
A United Nations report in June stated, “the human rights crisis in Haiti has plummeted to a new low. … A record 1.3 million people are now displaced by violence.”
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has banned commercial flights from the U.S. to Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital and most populated city, through Sept. 8 due to ongoing security risks.
Last week, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti warned U.S. citizens to depart the island nation as soon as possible.
“Haitians who are here who are trying to make a living, and kind of help the U.S. economy, being sent back to Haiti, you’re sending them back to their probable death,” Pierre said.
“They’re nervous. They don’t know what to do,” he added. “Some of them have nowhere to go, they don’t have a home to go back to.”