DHS conducts second deportation flight to Cap-Haïtien
The Department of Homeland Security sent a second deportation flight in a week to Haiti on Thursday, returning 57 Haitians to the unstable Caribbean country, including several children born in the U.S. and Brazil.
The children were part of two families aboard the Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter flight that landed shortly after 11:30 a.m. in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti’s second-largest city and the main gateway for international flights since gang violence prompted restrictions on U.S. carriers flying into Port-au-Prince.
The youngest person aboard the ICE Air flight was a 3-year-old born in the U.S., according to information shared with the Miami Herald after the passenger arrived.
The deported parents of the children condemned the move, telling the Herald that they found it “scandalous” that children born in the U.S. were being sent to Haiti. They also condemned the Haitian government for agreeing to take them back when the government is not prepared to accept returnees. One of the children, a little boy, played with a toy as his parents reluctantly spoke.
The ICE Air deportation charter flight GXA6196 originated in Alexandria, Louisiana, and departed Opa-locka Executive Airport at 10:04 a.m. for Cap-Haïtien, arriving moments after another deportation flight from The Bahamas, also the second in a week, landed.
Until now, deportation flights to Haiti have taken place an average of once a month. The previous flight was last Thursday and had 161 deportees, including over a dozen individuals with criminal records that included sex crimes involving children.
Last month, however, U.S. officials warned Haitian authorities to expect an increase in deportations following the Supreme Court’s decision to allow President Donald Trump to end Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status designation even while litigation challenging the termination continues in the courts. The plan at the time, was to return up to 250 Haitians a week via two weekly flights.
Asked if DHS had provided official notice on when it would begin ramping up flights and if Thursday’s Global X charter was the start of such a change, Haitian officials said they’ve yet to receive any official notice. A DHS spokesperson declined to confirm, saying “for operational security and the safety of our personnel, we would never disclose information about our deportation flights.
“Temporary Protected Status is exactly that—temporary,” the spokesperson added. “For too long, TPS has been allowed to function as a de facto amnesty program despite Congress never intending it to be permanent. What we would say now is it’s closing time, which means you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
Haiti Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé previously told the Miami Herald that the timing was not right to return Haitians to the country, which is not only grappling with roads blocked by gangs, government buildings and schools overtaken by the displaced and a surge in violence, but is also trying to organize its first general elections in a decade.
The increase in the number of flights would signal an increase in the number of Haitians being detained in the U.S. and placed in deportation proceedings following the end of TPS. More than 300,000 Haitians were enrolled in the humanitarian program, which allowed them to legally live and work in the United States because of dangerous conditions in their homeland. Haitian immigrant-rights groups and others have argued that Haiti remains far too dangerous for large-scale returns, while DHS has maintained that conditions have improved enough to send Haitians back.
Professional boxer on flight
Among those deported to Haiti on Thursday was Jay Dabelus, a professional boxer who resided in Lauderhill and was originally protected by TPS. In the deportation process for three months, Dabelus was sent to Haiti two days before his 26th birthday.
“I don’t know anything about Haiti,” he said, speaking in English. “I was born in The Bahamas and had been living in the USA for twenty-something years.”
Dabelus was 6 years old when he came to Florida, he said, describing himself as a former No. 1 ranked amateur boxer in the state and No. 9 in the U.S. before turning professional eight years ago. He said his goal is to relocate to The Bahamas “and carry on with my professional boxing career and go from there.”
Dabelus said he knows little about Haiti.
“I don’t have any resources, family members or people to aid me, so I am just trying to see how I can go,” he said. “I got my high school diploma. Everything that I have and have received in life is from Florida, from the United States.”
Though northern Haiti doesn’t have the gang violence that has gripped Port-au-Prince and other regions, the deportation flights, along with the number of Haitians fleeing violence, are straining the area’s resources, locals have said. They also live in constant fear that the violence will ultimately reach them.
Of Haiti’s nearly 12 million people, more than half need humanitarian assistance because of surging gang violence. Meanwhile, nearly 1. 5million people have been forced to abandon their homes because of gang violence — the same number displaced by the 2010 earthquake, which prompted the Obama administration to designate Haiti for TPS.
“Following its mass de-legalization efforts, this administration is knowingly sending people, including children, back into danger in Haiti. There is no limit to its cruelty and disregard for human life,” said Savi Arvey, director of policy refugee and immigrant rights at Human Rights First. “This is the 9th flight this year and on average we’ve seen one flight per month since December 2023.”
The flight arrived in Haiti amid ongoing gang attacks and a broader immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, which carried out nearly 50,000 immigration detentions in July. It is the highest single monthly arrest total by the Department of Homeland Security since Trump began his second term, according to recently released government data provided by ICE to the Deportation Data Project based at U.C. Berkeley and UCLA. Among the detentions are more than 7,000 arrests in Florida and 500 in Ohio, two states with populations of Haitians who previously had TPS.
READ MORE: DHS boasts it returned gang leaders, sexual offenders to an unstable Haiti
In addition to being arrested at traffic stops, Haitians are also being outfitted with electronic ankle monitors by federal authorities in the Ohio area. No one appears to be immune — not individuals with asylum applications pending nor church leaders, two of whom were recently arrested by ICE in Springfield, Ohio.
This weekend, religious leaders are expected to travel to Springfield to request the immediate release of one of the pastors, Joubert Adrien, from immigration detention after he was detained while riding as a passenger in a car. A husband and father of two children, ages 15 and 7, he has lived in the United States for five years. Faith leaders also note that he has no criminal history, no prior immigration detention and no final order of removal. He also has not lived in Haiti for more than 20 years.
This week dozens of Haitian migrants were taken to the Krome Detention Center in southwest Miami-Dade after being detained in front of grocery stores and shopping malls.
On Tuesday, the United States was among several governments offering its “deepest condolences to the victims and their families” in Haiti after armed gangs stormed the mountainside farming community of Kenscoff near the capital, killing dozens of people and kidnapping more than 50 others, including infants. The gang leader involved is threatening to kill them or use them as human shields if police move against his fighters.
Some of the victims were massacred in a church that had become a place of refuge for those displaced by the repeated violence; others were shot as they fled or were burned alive. The killings and abductions have prompted the U.N. Security Council to schedule a meeting on Haiti at 3 p.m. Friday.
It was unclear where those aboard Thursday’s ICE deportation flight were all from Haiti or how long they had been in the U.S. As reflected in the manifest shared with Haitian authorities, some of those deported had previously lived in Brazil, which is part of a broader migration route that emerged after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake.
This story was originally published August 27, 2026 at 10:26 AM.
Jacqueline Charles has reported on Haiti and the English-speaking Caribbean for the Miami Herald for over a decade. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for her coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, she was awarded a 2018 Maria Moors Cabot Prize — the most prestigious award for coverage of the Americas.