Without TPS, Haitian women will be arrested, detained and deported to a country in crisis.
The Trump administration announced late last month it will terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian refugees in the United States. As a result of this decision, thousands of Haitian immigrants with legal status will become undocumented and eligible for deportation in September.
Temporary Protected Status is an immigration program that provides temporary travel and employment authorization to refugees fleeing severe natural disasters, persecution and violence as they seek permanent asylum. It also shields recipients from deportation.
Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by violence in Haiti. Without TPS, Haitian women will be arrested by ICE, detained and eventually sent to a country where gangs frequently use sexual violence against women and girls to terrorize communities and gain control. In 2024, the U.N. logged more than 6,400 cases of such gender-based violence in Haiti.
“Gang members see the number of rapes as the number of victories,” Pascale Solages, co-founder of a feminist organization in Haiti, told The World. “When gangs kidnap a woman, almost always they rape her.”
In July 2021, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated. For four years, his successors have faced growing instability, unable to quell violence.
As a result of the gang-led insurgency filling this power vacuum, Haiti is “teetering on the brink” of collapse, according to a U.N. report in March. Gangs now control 80 to 90 percent of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital.
Half of the Caribbean nation’s population currently faces crisis levels of hunger or worse. Across the country, violence has displaced more than a million people.
Haiti is nearly as dangerous for children as the Gaza Strip, a recent report from the U.N. found. The number of children victimized in the Haiti conflict skyrocketed 500 percent between 2023 and 2024.
And, since Trump cut 90 percent of U.S. humanitarian aid abroad, including in Haiti, the situation there only grows more dire. Women in Haiti can no longer access maternal healthcare or HIV/AIDS treatment once supported by U.S. humanitarian efforts.
According to The Lancet, 14 million people could die as a result of Trump’s demolition of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and his pause on most humanitarian projects. This number includes many women who may die as a result of preventable childbirth complications. The Lancet’s figure also includes 4.5 million preventable deaths among children under 5 years old.
Nathalye Cotrino, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, wrote a scathing report outlining the impact of current U.S. policy on Haiti and its people. Published June 30, Cotrino writes, in part:
“Some American policymakers appear focused on addressing the Haitian crisis by seeking to prevent Haitians from fleeing human rights abuses, interdicting them at sea, blocking them from accessing asylum in the U.S., terminating humanitarian parole and refugee resettlement and moving up the date to end temporary protection for Haitians now in the U.S. This approach is legally problematic, morally bankrupt and ultimately self-defeating. It ignores the plight of people suffering unspeakable pain at the hands of criminal groups.
“It also fails to recognize that having a country largely controlled by criminal groups only 700 miles away from American shores will inevitably affect U.S. interests and make these groups even harder to dismantle over time. If the criminal groups consolidate power, both Haiti and the region risk becoming an even greater trafficking hub for drugs, weapons and people. This will cause more people to flee, but the Trump administration’s dismantling of safe pathways means asylum seekers will be forced into ever more dangerous journeys.”
Trump’s mass-deportation regime plans to arrest Haitian refugees with expiring TPS—meaning Haitian people across the U.S. will face deportation to a country experiencing a severe humanitarian crisis. In their home country, Haitian women may be raped, killed by gangs or killed because of Trump’s devastating cuts to healthcare and food-aid abroad.
Ending TPS for Haitian refugees also ushers in a secondary threat: All Black and Caribbean immigrants, refugees and migrants will become vulnerable to racial profiling by immigration officials, mirroring current profiling of and state violence against Hispanics and Latinos.
Alongside Latinos, these groups will be detained in immigration facilities that state Rep. Angie Nixon (D-Fla.) dubbed “modern-day concentration camps.” An immigrant woman who was incarcerated in Florida recently described her experience in detention as “hell on earth” in a letter, according to USA Today.
Trump officials also intend to end TPS protections for refugees from Afghanistan, Cameroon and Venezuela, countries ravaged by violence, including gender-based violence and oppression.
Ending TPS for refugees is “morally bankrupt,” as Cotrino wrote, and it will have uniquely negative impacts on women.
With the administration focused squarely on its racist, xenophobic pledge to deport as many immigrants as possible, we should not be surprised by such callous disregard for the human right to seek asylum. By ending TPS for refugees, Trump can detain and deport more people under the guise of legality.
The doctrine of the Trump administration is that the United States owes nothing to these refugees, regardless of the conditions they are escaping.
This is not “America first.” It is America without empathy. We cannot stop fighting this heartlessness.
Great Job Ava Blando & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
