After court’s TPS ruling, York’s Haitian immigrants lose work permits
Aug. 5, 2026, 3:47 p.m. ET
The Rev. Gusmane Michel didn’t think it could get worse for members of his congregation at the First Haitian Church of York.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling revoking Temporary Protective Status for Haitian immigrants who had fled the country since a powerful earthquake devastated the country in 2010 left a number of his flock facing the possibility of being sent back to their unstable and chaotic homeland.
That was terrifying, Michel said. Haiti, since the earthquake, has suffered a string of natural and manmade disasters, leaving the Caribbean nation in virtual chaos, worse than it has ever been, Michel said, which is saying something considering Haiti’s lengthy history of instability and chaos.
There is no functioning government. Armed gangs rule much of the nation’s capital. The U.S. State Department advises Americans not to travel to Haiti; it is much too dangerous. It appeared unthinkable to Michel that former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem determined that Haiti no longer met the conditions for granting protective status to those fleeing the country.
And then, on July 27, DHS revoked work permits for Haitian immigrants who were afforded TPS. As of July 28, those immigrants were no longer legally able to work in the U.S.
“People are losing their jobs,” Michel said. “A lot of members of our church can’t work. We don’t know exactly what they can do.”
So now facing deportation to a country that is determined to be too dangerous for Americans, many families have lost their means of support.
Sole breadwinners detained
And it appears now that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has intensified its efforts to detain Haitian immigrants in York County and send them back to Haiti.
Just this last weekend, Michel said, ICE agents detained a number of people while they were grocery shopping.
In a lot of these cases, said Deb Detzel, director of the YMCA’s New American Welcome Center, ICE is detaining men who are the sole breadwinners for their families.
Many women don’t work because they have small children and childcare is unaffordable or not available, Detzel said. When men are detained, she said, those families are split up.
“That’s what happens when you dehumanize people,” she said. “All these ICE people and police officers are members of our community. People in our community are taking dads away from their families. What community am I living in? They’re yanking people away from their families.”
Local police helping ICE
Agreements that York County police departments have entered with ICE are essentially making local police agents of the federal government, doing the job that ICE is charged with doing, Detzel said. These departments are pulling people over for minor infractions, such as having an air freshener hanging from their rearview mirror or having a license plate frame or “any small reason,” she said.
“People are being picked up all over the place,” she said.
Detzel told the story of accompanying a woman who was retrieving her family’s car from an impound after her husband had been pulled over and detained. The reason for the traffic stop was an expired inspection. Detzel said paperwork on the car’s passenger seat indicated that the car had passed inspection but had failed the emissions test. The paperwork showed that the man had an appointment for another emissions test the day after he was pulled over.
Normally, Detzel said, police would look at the paperwork and tell the driver to get the test and stop by the police station after the car passed with the paperwork. But not in this case, she said.
In addition to that, ICE has sent letters to a number of Haitian immigrants asking them to come by the agency’s York office on Clugston Road to check in. Once they’re there, Detzel said, the agency is fitting them with ankle monitors so ICE can keep track of them. Men who were still able to work and whose jobs required them to wear work boots cannot lace up their boots with the bulky monitors on their ankles, Detzel said.
“They have a whole bunch of people on monitors so they can drive a bus around and round people up,” Detzel said. “Is our city really seeing this happen?”
The issue of work permits is complicated. The Trump administration put a pause on work permits from last February to October and then extended it another 90 days specifically for Haitian immigrants.
But many of those with work permits have applications for asylum pending, the idea being that immigrants seeking asylum can work while their case is adjudicated. The policy was intended to lessen the burden on communities hosting asylum seekers. Detaining them costs a lot of money. If they’re working – and paying taxes and spending money in the local economy – they are contributing, rather than being a drag on the community.
But with the work permits issued under TPS being terminated, employers risk running afoul of the law if they continue to employ immigrants who, while seeking asylum, technically have legal status to be in the U.S. and work, Detzel said.
“Lawsuits have been filed, but as the cases wind their way through the courts, lots of immigrants are being detained or deported while their cases are processed,” Detzel said.
“Instilling fear and uncertainty and chaos is the policy,” she said, “and cruelty is the point.”
‘Closing time’
To underscore that point, DHS released a statement to the Associated Press about the revocation of TPS saying it is offering Haitians $2,600 checks to buy a “free flight home.”
The statement read, “It’s closing time, which means you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
Meanwhile, Michel is frustrated that he can’t do more for his congregation.
“It’s hard,” he said. “I really don’t know what to do. People can’t work. They are afraid to go to church. We’re trying to help them, but we don’t have a lot of resources. People have families to support. They’re just trying to survive. We’re trying to help them in some way.”
Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a York Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at mike@ydr.com.