FILE PHOTO: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks to employees at the Department of Homeland Security, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025, in Washington, U.S. Manuel Balce Ceneta/Pool via REUTERS//File Photo
WASHINGTON -U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday cut the duration of deportation protections and work permits for 521,000 Haitians covered by the Temporary Protected Status program so that they will expire in August, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said.
The decision reverses a Biden administration move last year to extend the protections through February 2026, the spokesperson said, saying the extension was unjustified.
President Donald Trump, a Republican, tried to end most enrollment in the TPS program during his 2017-2021 presidency but was blocked by federal courts. Noem earlier this month revoked a Biden-era TPS extension for some 600,000 Venezuelans and terminated the status for half of them, whose protections and access to work permits expire in April.
Trump falsely said during a September 2024 debate with Democrat Kamala Harris that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets, sparking fear of retaliation among Haitians in the city. Trump said a month later that if elected he would revoke TPS for Haitians and deport them.
Noem will now need to decide whether to terminate the status for Haitians.
“President Trump and I are returning TPS to its original status: temporary," she said in a statement.
More than a million people, over half of them children, are now displaced within Haiti where gang violence continues unabated despite the start of a United Nations-backed security mission last year, U.N. data published in January showed.
Haiti has lacked elected representatives since 2023 and has not held elections since 2016. The country's capital is almost entirely controlled by armed gangs, and leaders have said security must first be established to hold a free and fair vote.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson; Editing by Leslie Adler and Deepa Babington)
