IJDH applauds DHS Secretary Mayorkas’s announcement this morning that the Biden Administration is extending and redesignating Haiti for Temporary Protected Status (TPS). The legal and factual grounds for these actions are compelling: no one should be deported to Haiti’s currently dire conditions.
Haiti’s redesignation for TPS will permit Haitians to apply for TPS’ protection from deportation and for work permits if they were in the United States on or before June 3, 2024, and otherwise qualify. This includes current TPS holders, all of whom arrived in the United States by November 6, 2022, and about 300,000 additional Haitians who arrived thereafter, most legally paroled into the United States under the processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans begun in January 2023, the Haitian Family Reunification Program, and otherwise.
Proactively coordinating with local and national allies, writing and soliciting organizational support and op-eds, and widely circulating support items, IJDH for months intensely championed Haiti’s redesignation for TPS, which was broadly urged by political leaders and organizations. Support included May 7’s Capitol Hill press conference by U.S. lawmakers and civil society leaders; a March 18 letter to Secretaries Mayorkas and Blinken from 20 U.S. Senators and 47 U.S. Representatives; a March 26 letter from 482 organizations nationally; a separate letter from 53 U.S. Representatives on April 23 (available on request); Miami-Dade County Commissioner Marleine Bastien’s Miami Herald op-ed (April 24); and Marcela Garcia’s Boston Globe column (April 5), among other support. For example, U.S. Senators Markey, Booker, Butler, Duckworth, and Warren, with House Haiti Caucus Co-Chairs Pressley, Cherfilus-McCormick, and Clarke, and Rep. McGovern urged a Haiti deportation halt in a May 15 letter to Secretary Mayorkas.
Haiti’s extremely dire current conditions necessitating the country’s redesignation for TPS unfortunately remain a by-product of an anti-democratic U.S. foreign policy which continues to frustrate the aspirations of Haiti’s people for democratic self-rule. If the Biden Administration wishes to sustainably reduce immigration pressures from Haiti, it will, as independent observers like IJDH have been urging for years, immediately cease its support for the corrupt PHTK party and other undemocratic actors that continue to block progress toward the democratic governance which Haitian civil society has been demanding for years. Only then can truly fair elections be conducted and a legitimate government formed.
But kudos today to Secretaries Mayorkas and Blinken and the Biden Administration for taking this necessary and appropriate step, and to all of the U.S. Senators and Representatives (including the entire Massachusetts delegation) as well as the nearly 500 organizations whose advocacy helped bring it about!