The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown will soon leave more than 500,000 Haitian refugees vulnerable to deportation back to a country facing a spiraling political and security crisis as armed gangs and police continue to fight for control of the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s embattled capital city.
Both Haiti’s national police and a United Nations-backed security force have been unable to subdue an ongoing insurgency led by various armed groups in Haiti. Last week, residents warned that the fall of Port-au-Prince to gangs is imminent as the provisional government set up after the assassination of Haiti’s controversial president in 2021 struggles to maintain control.
Steven Datus, a former longtime U.S. resident who was deported to Haiti in 2022 after protesting conditions inside a notorious Florida immigration jail, told Truthout that gangs are currently overpowering the government where he lives in Port-au-Prince. Competing armed groups controlled about 80 percent of the city as of early March, according to reports.
“I have heard about the Trump movement on sending people back to Haiti, and it’s not safe for anyone right now,” Datus said in an interview. “It’s like, I don’t know who’s backing these gangs up, but it’s more than just street gangs just taking over neighborhoods. These ‘street gangs’ have more ammunition and more power than the police forces.”
Armed groups are burning homes and terrorizing residents as they take and hold territory, Datus said, and people with the ability to flee to other parts of the country are hemmed in by road blockades. Along with many neighbors, Datus said he was forced to abandon his home and is taking a big risk by reaching out internationally to speak with journalists and ask for support. “And as of right now, I don’t know how this is going to end. I don’t know how 2025 is going to end because things are just horrible,” Datus said.
Democrats in Congress, human rights groups, Christian charities and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are pleading with the Trump administration to restore immigration protections for Haitians escaping violence that were curtailed by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem and are now set to expire on August 3.
Without these protections, known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and, in some cases, Humanitarian Parole, hundreds of thousands of people will soon become vulnerable to deportation. The administration has reportedly sent out notices to thousands of Haitian refugees, including legal residents, urging them to self-deport within weeks.
Immigrant rights groups filed legal challenges against the Trump administration on behalf of hundreds of thousands of people from Haiti and Venezuela, two nations that have sent waves of refugees abroad in recent years. A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the revocation of TPS protections for 350,000 people from Venezuela as the case moves forward, but the Trump administration has attacked the judiciary in the media and threatened to ignore its rulings, leaving experts terrified of a constitutional crisis.
Indeed, President Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, Trump’s anti-immigrant homeland security adviser, appear determined to include Haiti’s refugees in their plans for mass deportation after spreading racist lies about Haitian immigrants on the campaign trail.
Vice President J.D. Vance, a recent Catholic convert, has repeatedly doubled down on attacking and deporting immigrants despite intercession by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is warning Republicans that 80 percent of people vulnerable to deportation are Christian and 61 percent are Catholic. Up to 66 percent of Haitians identify as Catholic, and many refugees rely on assistance from Catholic churches and Christian charities when navigating the U.S. immigration system.
In 2024 alone, at least 5,601 people were killed in Haiti as a result of street violence, while a further 2,212 people were injured and 1,494 kidnapped, according to the UN Human Rights Office. In January, the UN’s migration office reported that more than 1 million people have been displaced by conflict in Haiti and are now homeless, a threefold increase in displacement since 2023.
Datus said the conditions in Port-au-Prince are deteriorating in his neighborhood and many others, and people are fleeing their homes with “nowhere to go.” Video Datus sent to Truthout show friends and neighbors gathering in crowded areas where they feel safer. Datus hopes people outside of Port-au-Prince will see the videos and help his displaced community find shelter away from the fighting.
“Where we’re at right now is horrible, it’s a hole in the wall,” Datus said. “The people that I’m with, they’re not really like just asking for food … but if you’re not in a place where you’re comfortable, safe, it’s like you won’t even have the appetite to eat.”
Datus was deported back to Haiti in 2022, after living with his family in the U.S. since he was 5 years old. Datus said he told U.S. immigration officials that he had no family or support networks in Haiti but was deported anyway. Deporting more people who have made lives in the U.S. and have few support networks in Haiti will only intensify the humanitarian crisis, Datus said.
“This is the worst time for deportations, because if you imagine sending somebody who left Haiti at 5 years old, and he gets sent back to Haiti with no family, he’s going to be walking in the streets,” Datus said. “Now he’s going to get to a neighborhood or somewhere [that is blocked off by] vigilantes because … police can’t defend the whole [of] Haiti right now. So, it is like mostly everybody’s turning into vigilantes to protect their own well-being.”
In response to ongoing violence in Haiti and pleas from human rights groups, in June 2024, the Biden administration extended TPS for refugees from Haiti until February 2026. (TPS holders must apply with the federal government and pay fees, while Humanitarian Parole is granted on a case-by-case basis.) This February, Noem reversed this decision, reducing the extension from 18 months to 12 months. For many Haitians covered by TPS or Humanitarian Parole, their protection will now expire on August 3 at the latest.
The U.S. has provided TPS for people fleeing violence and poverty in Haiti since 2010. Trump’s DHS reports that the number of people eligible for the program ballooned from 155,000 in 2021 to 530,000 by 2024, which the agency cites as evidence of fraud and abuse.
However, human rights groups say the U.S. has a responsibility to help Haiti because the Black-led nation has a long and deep history of struggling under foreign influence and economic domination.
“Let’s be clear: this is a war on poor, Black and Brown people who dared to seek safety,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, in a statement on March 21. “These families have followed the rules. Now they are being told they’re no longer welcome because Trump wants to rally his base with racist fear-mongering.”
In a February statement, a DHS spokesperson said the Biden administration had attempted to “tie the hands of the Trump administration” by extending TPS for Haiti “far longer than justified or necessary.” According to Datus and his neighbors in Port-au-Prince, the idea that refugees from Haiti no longer need protection from deportation flies in the face of the obvious facts on the ground.
“I’m risking it by basically even doing what I’m doing, but I have no choice because I have nowhere to go, I have no family in Haiti,” Datus said. “This is one of the main things that I was trying to tell my deportation officers and my judges and my lawyers … I had nobody down here. Now I’m in a position where I [have] had to flee my house.”
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