Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has announced a new deportation amnesty for Haitians, covering more than 300,000 people including many who have arrived illegally during the Biden administration.
The designation, known as Temporary Protected Status, gives the Haitians 18 months of legal presence, along with work permits and some taxpayer benefits.
Many of the Haitians likely already enjoy those benefits thanks to Mr. Mayorkas’ generous use of “parole,” but others who came without parole will now get some legal protections.
Mr. Mayorkas also granted an 18-month extension to Haitians already here under a previous TPS dating back to 2010, when a devastating earthquake struck the island nation. That status has been renewed and updated over the years, to cover roughly 200,000 people now living in the U.S.
But Mr. Mayorkas’ expansion Friday will more than double that, with the government estimating 309,000 Haitians could qualify as first-time applicants.
That’s a rough indication of just how many Haitians have arrived illegally since November 2022, which is the last time Mr. Mayorkas granted TPS to Haiti.
He said Haiti is a classic candidate for TPS given ongoing political violence and the nation’s always-present tendency to “flooding and landslides” and its vulnerability to storms and earthquakes.
“We are providing this humanitarian relief to Haitians already present in the United States given the conditions that existed in their home country as of June 3, 2024,” Mr. Mayorkas said. “In doing so, we are realizing the core objective of the TPS law and our obligation to fulfill it.”
Immigration activists celebrated the move but pointed out that Mr. Mayorkas’ department just recently conducted deportation flights to Haiti. The activists demanded those flights be halted too, questioning how the nation could be deemed dangerous enough to deserve TPS but not too dangerous to take back some people.
The Haitian Bridge Alliance also called on the administration to “immediately release” any Haitians in immigration detention and to close out their deportation cases.
“We are providing this humanitarian relief to Haitians already present in the United States given the conditions that existed in their home country as of June 3, 2024,” he said. “In doing so, we are realizing the core objective of the TPS law and our obligation to fulfill it.”
TPS is designed to be a temporary relief for countries suffering from a natural disaster, pandemic, war, political upheaval or other massive unrest that makes it dangerous for people to be repatriated. It’s also supposed to give the troubled nation time to recover without having to worry about an influx of expatriates.
It’s a power past presidents have flexed, but none as dramatically as President Biden.
As of May, roughly 860,000 people were protected by TPS. The Haitian designation could send that figure well over the million mark.
By contrast, at the end of the Trump administration, the total TPS population was about 320,000.
Before Friday’s announcement Venezuelans were the largest population with about 340,000, followed by Haiti and El Salvador.
The 180,000 Salvadorans are a particularly stark example. Each of them has been in the U.S. under TPS for more than two decades, dating back to a series of earthquakes in January and February 2001.
Critics of TPS argue that El Salvador long ago recovered from that earthquake and the need for TPS expired. The Trump administration tried to end that and other TPS designations but was blocked by courts.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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