Inside the Supreme Court fight over Trump’s Haiti rhetoric
Trump’s false claims about Haitian immigrants surfaced in the Supreme Court case. Justice Alito downplays them; Justice Kagan pushes back.
Hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the United States are living in uncertainty, at risk of being forced to return to a homeland that has only become more dangerous since they left it, advocates say.
Deportation protections for many Haitian and Syrian immigrants were terminated this week as the result of a June 25 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing President Donald Trump to pull the plug on Temporary Protected Status, a humanitarian program permitting people from imperiled nations to temporarily live and work in the United States.
“All TPS holders have played by the rules set out by them, sending in updated addresses when they move,” said Dan Berlin, policy director for global nonprofit International Rescue Committee. “The government does know where they live, because they’ve been abiding by the rules. That makes them particularly vulnerable.”
Advocates now worry that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement may begin detaining people at their homes, in their communities or when they check in with immigration authorities. This week, Haitian residents in Springfield, Ohio, began receiving letters from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ordering them to report to the ICE office in Cincinnati, sparking concerns.
The elimination of the TPS program affects more than 300,000 Haitians nationwide, who now face the possibility of deportation to a country beset by widespread gang warfare, unreliable healthcare, cholera outbreaks and deadly drone attacks. The International Rescue Committee this year ranked Haiti fifth on its annual emergency watch list of nations at risk of humanitarian crisis.
“What we have seen in Haiti is very much the risk of humanitarian deterioration coming into reality,” said Ciaran Donnelly, the New York City-based organization’s senior vice president for international programs.
The situation has worsened significantly in recent months, Donnelly said: More than half of Haiti’s 12 million people are now estimated to be in humanitarian need, with rampant food insecurity reported across the Caribbean nation.
“People are dying of hunger,” Donnelly said. “Government and health services have effectively collapsed, with no real expectation of assistance.”
Armed gangs now control nearly 90% of Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital city, a power grab that began with the vacuum left by the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moise in 2021. According to Amnesty International, police stations, hospitals and ports have been attacked, leaving Haitian society in chaos.
Families have been displaced as they flee violence and skyrocketing gang recruitment of young people, Donnelly said. Meanwhile, drone strikes have proliferated in public places, killing more than 1,200 people – including 17 children – since early last year, he said.
“We’re unaware of who’s operating the drones, but we’re primarily witnessing an impact on the civilian population,” he said.
Haitian immigrants have few options
Though the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling wasn’t technically a final decision, its wording makes ongoing legal challenges unlikely to succeed, Donnelly said. The ruling also affects about 6,000 immigrants from Syria, which was torn by devastating civil war between 2011 and 2024.
In Florida, home to nearly half of the country’s 1.1 million Haitian immigrants, religious leaders have implored state senators Rick Scott and Ashley Moody to take steps to protect the population. Many received Temporary Protected Status after earthquakes struck Haiti in 2010, killing more than 200,000 people.
Berlin said while some people will have other legal options to pursue – for instance, asylum claims or family ties – most who had been here under the now-discontinued humanitarian program will be subject to deportation.
“They face the choice of voluntarily returning to Haiti or remaining in the U.S. without documentation and being subject to enforcement actions,” Berlin said.
The Trump administration first made moves to remove Haitians’ protected status in February 2025, so advocates have long been busy educating immigrants about their options and legal rights, he said.
“The fact is there aren’t pathways for a lot of people,” he said. “They’ve been making whatever decisions they can make, either preparing to return or to go to other countries, like Mexico.”
Loss of immigrants could hurt key industries
Many in the community have been in the U.S. for 10 to 15 years, Berlin said.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan group based in Washington, D.C., two-thirds of the country’s Haitian immigrants are concentrated in the metropolitan areas of Miami, New York and Boston.
“They’re part of the local economies, and they’re overrepresented in critical industries like health and elder care,” Berlin said. “There’s a lot of inflationary pressure already, and we’re hearing outcries from employers. We’re going to feel these impacts across the country.”
Key industries such as construction, transportation, hospitality and caregiving could see major loss of labor, and trade groups have warned of looming economic disruptions.
Healthcare providers around the country have said the program’s termination will disrupt vital operations as Haitian immigrants working in nursing homes, home health agencies and mental health facilities lose legal status.
Meanwhile, children of Haitian immigrants who’ve grown up in the U.S. will be swept up in the turmoil, either facing family separation or the prospect of uprooting to a violent foreign land. In Haiti, those who’ve relied on remittances sent by U.S. immigrants will see them dry up while deportees add to the country’s collective emergency.
“Haiti is a country experiencing a massive humanitarian crisis,” Donnelly said. “It’s not a country safe for people to return to.”
Contributing: Erin Glynn, Cincinnati Enquirer; Jessica Guynn, USA TODAY.