More than 160 people deported to Haiti after TPS ends

WASHINGTON (TNND) — More than 160 people have been deported to Haiti after the U.S. ended its Temporary Protected Status for 350,000 Haitians.

The plane carrying the deportees landed in the northern Haitian city of Cap-Haitien on Thursday because the main international airport in Port-au-Prince is considered too dangerous due to ongoing gang violence, CBS News reported. The U.S. government currently has a ban on sending commercial flights to Haiti’s capital through early September.

Haiti’s National Office of Migration director general Jean Négot Bonheur Delva said that the deportees included TPS holders and Haitians who had served prison sentences.

“It is not the Haitian state that asks for them to be sent back,” Delva said. “Our mission is to welcome migrants of forced return. We welcome them with the aim of accompanying them to their home.”

Delva added that some of the deportees were not born in Haiti, but they are of Haitian descent.

He said that several deportees planned to travel to southern Haiti, which would be dangerous because gangs control the main routes leading to that area and are known to randomly open fire on vehicles passing through.

Other deportees are going to western Haiti, he said.

“There is one migrant who knows nothing about Haiti because he said he was coming from the Dominican Republic; that’s where he was born,” Delva said. He added that the government would attempt to reunify him with any potential relatives in Haiti or the Dominican Republic, where his mother and father are living.

Haitian immigration officials on Thursday offered deportees a maximum of $65 and food and drink.

“Those who cannot reach their homes today, we will host them in secure spaces and the next day the process will continue until all migrants return home as they should,” Delva said.

Delva did not mention how many of the 161 deportees were TPS holders who had legally lived and worked in the U.S. since 2010.

The Supreme Court in June allowed the TPS program to end, affecting some 1 million people from more than a dozen countries.

All the cases returned to the lower courts, but by late July, the federal government had not extended work permits for Haitians.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., lifted an order preventing deportations of Haitians on TPS, which was effectively a formality after the Supreme Court ruling.