Some Haitians living in the United States received a minor reprieve Friday when U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it would extend work authorization for those with Temporary Protected Status by 14 days, to July 24.
But for many, the extension was too little, too late. Employers had already issued notices advising them not to come to work.
This is the latest in a catastrophic sequence of events for the approximately 350,000 Haitian immigrants living in the U.S. on Temporary Protected Status, or TPS — a humanitarian designation granting the ability to legally live and work in the United States.
Last November, the Department of Homeland Security under then-Secretary Kristi Noem said it would terminate Haiti’s designation for temporary humanitarian protections, arguing that the country no longer qualified for the status despite escalating violence by armed groups and a devastating hurricane in December.
On June 25, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration, allowing the administration to eliminate deportation protections for the hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants who have built lives, started families, launched careers, and bought homes in the U.S. The decision incited fear and panic about imminent deportations to a country besieged by violence and a humanitarian emergency.
While the two-week extension has been cited as a reprieve by some, advocates told Documented that it does little to alleviate the fear of deportation operations and employment terminations that will face TPS holders after their work permits, and protected status as a whole, expire.
“The extension was good news because it gave some people an additional two weeks to work,” said Yolette Williams, president and CEO of the Flatbush, Brooklyn-based nonprofit Haitian American Alliance. “But that ping pong, that constant state of limbo, it’s so difficult.”
The short extension has created uncertainty for many Haitian TPS holders, said Dr. Marie Paul, the founder of the nonprofit Haitian Nurses Network, a New York-based community of healthcare professionals.
“I really don’t want to imagine what’s going to happen. I just cannot wrap my head around what’s the outcome for this,” Paul said. “They can’t work. They have mortgages. They have car payments. And then they have to pay rent. They have to shop for food.”
Paul said she had spoken with the family members of two Haitian TPS holders who had been sent home in advance of the previous work permit expiration date of July 10, with their employers citing TPS ending. Both worked as home health attendants, filling crucial roles in New York City’s healthcare industry, she said.
One worker, Paul said, was able to return to work four days later after submitting paperwork showing her employment authorization had been extended. She is still required to submit weekly paperwork proving her work authorization.
Williams, too, observed that many employers had suspended employees without pay despite the TPS extension. She has been trying to support impacted community members, helping them print out the official DHS document announcing the extension to share with their employers.
But sometimes, employers refuse to accept the documents and retain their workers.
“They’re continuing to fight,” she said of some TPS holders who are continuing to ask their employers for permission to work, noting that without their jobs, they don’t have any way to pay for basic necessities.
The work authorization extension aligns more with standard practice for Supreme Court rulings, according to Geoff Pipoly, an attorney who was part of the team representing Haitian TPS holders in the Supreme Court case. By the Supreme Court’s own rules, he said, rulings come into effect 32 days after they are issued — meaning even the extended work authorization breaks with the Court’s precedent. “This is incredibly, incredibly abnormal,” he said, in reference to the series of short-term extensions that has defined the withdrawal of TPS.
The recent ruling stands in contrast with the Trump Administration’s first termination of TPS for Haitians, in 2017. Then, Haitian TPS holders were given a six-month period after the initial termination before deportations and the end of work authorization would begin. There was “a wind-down period to allow people to get their affairs in order,” Pipoly said. Immigrant rights groups sued, resulting in a federal injunction that kept TPS in place through the first Trump administration – until the Biden administration re-designated TPS for Haiti in 2021. The short-term extensions this time break with the six-month “wind-down” precedent.
The hundreds of thousands Haitians who had TPS must now figure out their own individual legal path to stay in the US. For some, the temporary nature of TPS means that some TPS holders may be in more difficult legal circumstances than when they first gained the status.
Pipoly gave the example of a person who came to the country after the earthquake in 2010 and let their visa lapse after three years because they had TPS. “In the meantime, the immigration system gets me an order of removal. Because I technically overstayed the visa,” he said. “So now, I can tell you anybody with a final order of removal as of that date is going to be in jeopardy of immediate immigration detention and deportation.”
In Springfield, Illinois, where Pipoly represented Haitian TPS holders, the ruling has led Haitians to make extraordinary preparations. “There are several hundred families in Springfield who have already made arrangements with adoption and foster care agencies,” Pipoly said. “And that should tell you all you need to know about how unsafe it is in Haiti, where the parents’ choice is, ‘I would rather give up my child to a stranger [in the U.S.] than subject them to that, even if I’m going to be subject to it.’”
Williams, the Haitian American Alliance president, has been advising Haitian TPS holders, some of whom have lived in the U.S. since 2010, to prepare for the possibility of imminent deportation. She urges them to make plans for their homes, their cars, their pensions, and even their children, who may be American citizens and who some TPS holders feel will have a safer life staying in the United States.
“You have families where the children were born here. If you’re going to be separated, what are you going to do? Are you leaving your children behind? Are they coming with you? If you’re leaving them behind, who are you leaving them with?” Williams said.
In the meantime, the streets of Flatbush are quieter than usual as Haitian TPS holders are forced to stop working and instead shelter at home, fearful of potential interactions with immigration enforcement agencies.
“There is such a demoralization and anxiety and sadness and fear, people don’t go out,” Williams said. “People are in a state of not knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow or the next day.”
Haitian TPS holders at a loss for what to do should contact a responsible immigration attorney to discuss their options. “It is so, so, so, so, so important for people to contact a reputable immigration attorney yesterday,” Pipoly said. “Do not trust anything on the internet. Do not trust the rumor mill. Go see a lawyer.”
