On February 3 — the day the Department of Homeland Security had set to begin deporting 350,000 Haitians — a U.S. warship, the guided missile destroyer USS Stockdale, along with two Coast Guard patrol boats, appeared in Port-au-Prince Bay. The Stockdale has anti-air, anti-submarine and anti-drone capabilities which it used in firefights with the Ansar Allah in Yemen when it was deployed in the Red Sea.
The Pentagon obviously wanted to warn the Haitian masses that it would stop any mass attempt to flee by sea.
Feb. 7 was the date Haiti’s current Presidential Council was set to dissolve and be replaced by the U.S.-backed presidential candidate Alix Didier Fils-Aimé. Sending the Stockdale made it clear to bourgeois Haitian politicians that the Trump administration still had its eyes on Haiti.
Deportations and TPS
Temporary Protective Status (TPS) started in 1990 as a way of allowing refugees fleeing a dangerous situation, either political — generally a civil war — or environmental, to live and work in the United States. The U.S. granted Haitians TPS in 2010 after a massive earthquake hit Port-au-Prince, and it has been extended multiple times since then.
There are about 1.3 million people currently on TPS, including Haitians. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem rejected every extension or declaration that came up during her tenure.
Trump has actively tried to end TPS for Venezuela, Ethiopia and Afghanistan as well as Nicaragua and Honduras. He has run into a thicket of suits and Temporary Restraining Orders. Some cases made it to the Supreme Court.
One of the false justifications for the deportations Trump crows about is the allegation that immigrants take jobs and public services while not paying taxes. The American Immigration Council (AIC), in a study of 2023 data, established that “more than 164,000 TPS holders from Haiti who resided in the U.S. earned $3.9 billion in total household income, paid a total of $983.9 million in taxes — including $600.8 million in federal taxes and $383.1 million in state and local taxes — and held $2.9 billion in spending power.”
If the legal limits on deportations are struck down, 50,000 children born in the U.S. with one non-citizen parent will face a separation dilemma — should they stay or should they go?
Haitian workers are concentrated in health care facilities, such as nursing homes and rehabilitation centers. Their absence would be immediately felt, especially in south Florida, which is the home of many retirees.
A good part of the $3.9 billion cited by the AIC went back to families in Haiti, where the economy has only a few formal jobs, certainly far fewer than the 164,000 Haitians have in the U.S. Absorbing hundreds of thousands of new arrivals is not something Haiti can realistically do.
TPS should be retained for Haitian migrants. In fact, it should be expanded to include all immigrants, who are often forced to flee their home countries due to conditions the U.S. created.
