‘We’re human beings’: Haitians in the US fear family separation and deportation to violence

More than 330,000 Haitian immigrants in the US are set to lose their ability to legally live and work in the country as the Trump administration seeks to terminate their temporary protected status. An estimated 13,000 are nursing assistants, who care for 65,000 patients every day.“I get up at 5am every morning and I take two buses to work to clean the rooms of the residents. I give my heart,” said a nursing home housekeeper with TPS from Haiti, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “These residents are like my grandmother.”“I want to stay here in New York where I can be safe and care for my residents,” they added. “I cannot return to Haiti. It is not safe. I’m afraid that I would be killed if I return.”Donald Trump’s officials take a different view. The US supreme court ruled 6 to 3 in favor of the administration’s efforts to terminate TPS from Haitians and Syrians in June.As tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants prepare to lose their protections, families, communities and industries across the US are braced for extraordinary upheaval.“The impact is not just for the TPS recipients, but our whole communities,” said Roxana Rivera, assistant to the president at Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 32BJ. The union represents thousands of immigrant workers with TPS.“We do think this is a racist act from the administration targeting immigrants,” said Rivera.Homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin has argued immigrants with TPS should leave the US and seek other legal immigration statuses – despite no direct pathway from TPS to a green card, and asylum grant rates under the Trump administration having plummeted to less than 5%.The US state department has currently issued a non-travel advisory for Haiti due to a national state of emergency, as the country remains unsafe. TPS was first designated for Haitians in 2010.“The vast displacement of folks that have been law-abiding citizens being abruptly pulled and uprooted, basically losing employment, not being able to work, but also facing deportation and detention to home countries that are unsafe, is of a huge impact for our members and their workplaces,” added Rivera. “In the service sector, they can’t operate without immigrant workers, and they already have a hard time filling vacancies because of turnover.”A second immigrant from Haiti, based in New York, Pierre Etienne, who is a US citizen but has family members and friends in the US with TPS, criticized the decision to end the protections.“I have family members and close friends who are protected under TPS. They left Haiti because their lives were in danger. Armed gangs took over their neighborhoods, forcing them to flee and leaving them without their homes and everything they had built,” said Etienne. “They would be returning to a country where many areas remain unsafe and where they may have nowhere to live or no way to support themselves. Knowing that my loved ones could be placed in harm’s way causes me tremendous fear, stress and anxiety.”Ushers at the First Haitian evangelical church of Springfield during Sunday service on 26 January 2025. Photograph: Luis Andres Henao/APA third immigrant from Haiti, based in New York, who has lived in the US since 2000 and requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told of how the termination of his temporary protected status had upended his life.“The loss of TPS and my work authorization has turned my family’s life upside down,” he said. “This is where I became an adult, established my life, worked, paid taxes and built my family. I am married, and I am the father of two daughters who were born in the United States.”He and other Haitian immigrants with TPS did everything right, he said: registering, completing background checks, paying application fees and document renewals and organizing their lives around the protections.Now, he is set to lose his ability to legally work, but the bills for food, housing, utilities and caring for his children remain.“I’m not asking for special treatment. I’m asking for a fair opportunity to continue supporting my family and contributing to the country that has been my home since 2000,” he added. “It also creates the constant fear that I could be separated from my family and sent to a country that I left more than 25 years ago.“My daughters are Americans, but they now have to live with the possibility that their father may not be allowed to remain with them.”A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security claimed conditions in Haiti have improved enough to support the return of Haitians, despite the ongoing US travel advisory and the United Nations warning that the country continues to be plagued by violence.They did not respond to criticism that ending TPS for Haitians would be a mistake and cause labor disruptions to industries and employers reliant on Haitian immigrants.“Temporary Protected Status is exactly that – temporary,” the spokesperson said. “For too long, TPS has been allowed to function as a de facto amnesty program despite Congress never intending it to be permanent.”A White House spokesperson added that TPS “was never intended to be a pathway to permanent status or legal residency”.The second Haitian worker also criticized the hateful rhetoric toward immigrants from elected officials in recent years, including the false claim from Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.“Haitians should not be judged by stereotypes or used as political targets,” he said. “We’re human beings, parents, workers, taxpayers, neighbors and members of American communities.“When political leaders make degrading or misleading statements about an entire community, those statements have real consequences. They create fear, discrimination, workplace hostility, bullying of Haitian children and sometimes even threats of violence.”