Advocates Ask Trump Administration to Extend, Not End, Haitian TPS
America’s Voice lays out the negative response to the possibility that the Trump administration will eliminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians. The threat has provoked many responses, including from the editorial board of the Washington Post.
According to USA Today, USCIS acting director James McCament said in a letter last week that conditions have improved enough in Haiti after a series of natural disasters that TPS can be ended for Haitians living in America. The ending of TPS would mean the ending of their legal status here (for those who are here under TPS), opening them up to arrest, detention, and deportation. It would also mean family separation for those who have given birth to US-citizen children here over the last seven years, who would have to choose between taking their children to a dangerous country, or not being together at all.
Haitian TPS started in 2010, after a devastating earthquake in Haiti which displaced hundreds of thousands. TPS has been extended several times, after the country was struck by Hurricane Matthew, which killed 1,000 people. Cholera has also killed 9,000 people and continues to plague the country. The latest renewal of TPS for Haitians is set to expire July 22, and the final decision on whether to renew it rests with DHS Secretary John Kelly.
McCament has said that TPS should not be extended — which is a sharp departure from USCIS’ report from just four months ago, when Obama was still in office. That report said that:
Many of the conditions prompting the original January 2010 … designation persist, including a housing shortage, a cholera epidemic and limited access to medical care, damage to the economy … political instability, security risks, food insecurity, and environmental risks (as exemplified by the impact of Hurricane Matthew in October 2016).
Haitian TPS has broad bipartisan support, with members of Congress from Marco Rubio to Chuck Schumer supporting it. As Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) said this week:
Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world and right now it’s unable to support the roughly 50,000 Haitians that are currently receiving protected status here in the U.S. The U.S. should be focused on helping Haiti recover, not sending people back to a country that can’t support them.
In agreement was Esther Olavarria, a senior counselor at DHS under the Obama Administration, who said that letting TPS expire, and forcibly deporting Haitians back now “would be a travesty.”