By CHRIS PIERS

On July 27, the Trump administration terminated Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians living in the United States. TPS designation can be granted for foreign nationals living in the U.S. if their home country is deemed unsafe to return to. A TPS designation allows noncitizens the right to live and work in the U.S. without fear of deportation.

TPS was initially granted for Haitians after an earthquake devastated the country in 2010. Since then, the country has faced a torrent of humanitarian crises, leaving Haiti an unsafe place to return to. This reality led to TPS for Haitians being extended several times under Obama, Biden, and even the first Trump administration.

The termination of Haitian TPS has been a pet project of Trump and his allies since 2017, when his administration first attempted to terminate the designation. While that attempt was ultimately blocked by the courts of the day, this one seems to have stuck with the help of a far-right Supreme Court.

In spite of the claims of top U.S. officials that “Haiti is safe” for Haitians living in the U.S. to return to, the country remains thoroughly unequipped to handle hundreds of thousands of people returning. The country is marred by poverty, gang violence, and extreme political instability which all have their roots in colonial violence and exploitation. Currently, criminal gangs control most of the country’s capital, and political elections have not been held since 2016. Even the U.S. State Department agrees that Haiti is unsafe, having designated a Level Four “Do Not Travel” advisory for the country due to “the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care.”

In the meantime, some 350,000 Haitian TPS holders have made a life living, working, raising families, and paying taxes in the U.S.—many for longer than a decade. Deportation to Haiti not only endangers the lives of the TPS holders, but also threatens the safety and stability of those in Haiti who are dependent on remittances from those who are able to earn a wage in the U.S. Haitian TPS holders have also become an essential part of the workforce, particularly in the care sector, which was already facing a labor shortage before the termination of TPS. The loss of these workers is putting additional stress on an already strained industry that struggles to provide adequate care to the elderly and disabled. In many cities across the U.S., Haitian TPS holders have become interwoven into the fabric of the communities.

In recent days, ICE has begun requiring Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio, to wear ankle monitors. Evoking imagery of shackles and slavery, the devices are meant to track and intimidate the very same community that Trump and Vance venomously slandered as “eating the dogs, eating the cats” of their neighbors during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Despite ongoing rhetoric of deporting “violent criminals,” ICE has detained two pastors from Springfield as some of their first targeted attacks on Haitian TPS holders. Such attacks on pillars of the community reveal their motivation to break up and terrorize Haitians rather than restoring “law and order” that they pretend has been lost.

The fightback

Communities have not stayed silent as their neighbors suffer through these dehumanizing attacks. Thousands of people have mobilized in their cities from New York, to South Florida, to Springfield, Ohio, and beyond to demand extended protections for Haitians and a legal path to permanent residency and citizenship.

What communities across the U.S. have spontaneously come to recognize is that the attack on our Haitian neighbors and coworkers is fundamentally an attack on the entire working class. Rather than tackling violent crime, ICE agents are themselves violently destroying and destabilizing  working-class communities. Far from creating opportunities for U.S. citizens in the stagnating economy, the Trump administration’s campaign of mass deportation and scapegoating of immigrants only serves to further discipline and divide our class.

What is needed is sustained mass mobilization in the streets and organizing in our workplaces to defend Haitians living in the U.S. and all immigrants. The demand to extend protections for Haitians and other noncitizens is a correct one, but our demands must not end there. To defend our class against the bosses’ attacks, we need a movement that refuses to be divided by immigration status. We must demand and fight for citizenship rights for all and for the abolition of ICE. Only a working-class movement independent from the Democrats and Republicans is capable of waging this necessary struggle.

Photo: Haitians at Miami protest in January 2026. (bloomberg.com)