By G. Dunkel
September 16, 2026
Ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in a burst of deeply racist, brutal cruelty is a personal disaster for the Haitians swept up in the attacks. It is also a personal loss for the people in the nursing homes, hospitals and remediation centers, whose essential care many Haitians facing deportation now provide, and they will certainly miss their services, as will the restaurants and farmers who depend on Haitians’ labor.
Rally January 2026 at Fort Lauderdale / Hollywood International Airport, organized by several local union groups, demands extension of TPS.
TPS was just removed from approximately 330,000 Haitians and from a few thousand Syrians, Somalians, Ethiopians and Sudanese in February, all of whom now face deportation. Florida, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Ohio are the states with the largest number of Haitian TPS holders.
A coalition of immigrant rights groups in February released detailed data showing Haitian TPS holders contribute an estimated $5.9 billion annually to the U.S. economy and pay more than $1.5 billion in taxes. (haitiantimes.com)
Deportation flights for Haitians who had lost their TPS began Aug. 21 when a Department of Homeland Security-chartered flight with 160 Haitian nationals and their children born as U.S. citizens landed in Cap Haïtien, Haiti’s second largest city.
Haiti’s major international airport in Port-au-Prince is unavailable, because armed groups opposed to the government, which the big media calls gangs, have attacked it. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has closed Haiti’s airspace to commercial flights.
Nearly half a million Haitians work and live in the Dominican Republic which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. The president of the DR has pledged to deport 10,000 Haitians a month.
Deportees in chains
All the deportees are dressed in white jumpsuits and forced to wear shackles on their arms and legs connected to a chain around their waist which, intentionally or not, recalls the coffles of enslaved people being brought to market.
On one recent flight the deportees were kept in their shackles for 14 hours, not counting the flight time, arriving well after the Haitian government workers tasked with receiving them had gone home.
They are forced to hand over their personal possessions — immigration papers, passports, money and phones — allegedly to be returned on landing. The deportees have made numerous complaints, documented in media like the New York Times, CNN, ABC and Haïti Libre, that not all of the money and phones are returned.
Once they are landed, the Haitian government gives them 10,000 Haitian gourdes (about $80), which is less than the price of a bus ticket from the Cap Haïtien airport to Port-au-Prince. The money is not enough to get most of them home. The roads out of Cap Haïtien are controlled by groups that demand tolls from bus passengers. Five police officers were recently killed trying to leave Cap Haïtien.
Deportations to create economic disaster for Haiti
According to the International Monetary Fund, about 25% of Haiti’s economy — nearly $5 billion annually — is based on remittances, money sent by relatives working abroad. The IMF also reports that Haiti’s economy has contracted for a seventh consecutive year, and inflation remains high at around 32% a year.
