Bishops’ urgent plea to save TPS for Haitians
As Haitians in the U.S. face deportation, Catholic bishops meet with senators and write letters asking lawmakers to protect TPS status.
Haitians’ Temporary Protected Status (TPS) came to an end August 5, and TPS holders across the U.S. are now weighing whether to stay and risk deportation or leave the country.
The program was designed for Haitians who came to the U.S. to escape violence in their homeland, and all attempts to renew it by legal means have failed. But the State Department has issued a Level 4 travel advisory warning Americans not to travel to the Caribbean nation “due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, and terrorism.” Haiti is in a severe state of crisis; in 2021 its president was assassinated, and powerful local gangs use brutal violence to terrorize the population.
A deadly return
Deportees have become targets for gangs seeking ransom. After four Haitian women were deported from Puerto Rico, they were later kidnapped and found beheaded in February 2026.
“Leave these people alone. Deporting them is condemning them to death,” said Leonard Prophil, a community leader and spokesperson for Haitians in Puerto Rico.
A bipartisan group of American lawmakers who visited Haiti on July 27 described the conditions they found there as “horrific.”
Lawmakers see it firsthand
In the days surrounding their visit, three senior Haitian government officials — including the chiefs of staff at the defense and education ministries — were abducted. The lawmakers returned with reports of gruesome and sickening violence, including against a six-year-old American citizen.
The more than 350,000 Haitians who held TPS have shown little willingness to return to Haiti. As ICE deports Haitians, some have gone into hiding, while others have already been deported.
“They’ve been arresting people left and right — some people in the middle of the streets. We have people who went to the grocery store to cook for their kids and didn’t return home,” Dr. Marie D. Fouché, founder of Safe Harbor Circles, an organization that provides support to immigrants in Maryland, told CNN.
The bishops respond
A majority of Haitians are Catholic, owing to the nation’s history as a French colony, and U.S. Catholic bishops are increasingly voicing their concern about the dire situation of their Haitian congregants.
Bishop Brendan J. Cahill of the Diocese of Victoria, Texas, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration, called the situation “a moral crisis.” In a statement, he said:
Revoking the legal status of hundreds of thousands of people residing in our country creates a moral crisis when returning to their country of origin is not a safe or reasonable option. If we are truly to affirm the God-given dignity of every human person, we as a nation cannot turn a blind eye to such an injustice and the impossible choices it will create for families and communities.
Even if the Administration determines TPS is no longer warranted, deferred enforced departure remains a tool available to the President, and we urge him to exercise right judgement in this way. Forcibly sending families to dire conditions is a legacy all leaders should seek to avoid. To that end, my brother bishops and I also continue to call upon Congress to act—to meet this moment with the moral fortitude that is so desperately needed.
Cardinal Chibly Langlois, Bishop of Les Cayes, traveled to the United States at the end of July to celebrate a Mass of Solidarity at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Takoma Park, Maryland, on July 28. Langlois is the first and only Haitian cardinal in Catholic history.
“When one member of the Body of Christ suffers, the whole Body suffers with it… God’s people are not governed by fear but by faith. We proclaim our trust in a God who opens a way even when every human door seems closed,” he said in his homily.
He was joined by concelebrants including Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski of Miami; Archbishop Robert G. Casey of Cincinnati; Bishop Jacques Fabre-Jeune, CS, of Charleston, South Carolina; and 10 priests—including priests from Haiti serving Haitian immigrants in the U.S., priests whose religious orders serve in Haiti, and priests whose parishes have longstanding outreach programs there.
Bishops meet with Senate
Earlier that day, the four prelates had met with senators on Capitol Hill to urge passage of a Senate bill that would extend Haiti’s TPS designation, following the passage of a bipartisan bill in the U.S. House of Representatives in April that would extend that designation to 2029.
Other U.S. bishops, including Washington’s Cardinal Robert McElroy, Baltimore’s Archbishop William E. Lori and Bishop William E. Koenig of Wilmington, Delaware, have added their voices to the many asking the Senate to pass the extension of Haiti’s TPS designation.
Florida has the highest Haitian population in the U.S. and The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote a letter to Florida lawmakers urging them to support legislation that would extend TPS through 2029. Eight Florida bishops, representing all six dioceses in the state, signed the letter sent on August 5.
Despite the outcry from many Catholic prelates and other leaders, the Senate has not scheduled a vote on a proposed bill to extend TPS.