Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is once again targeting Haitians as part of his anti-immigration stance in this year’s elections, announcing plans to go after their immigration protections if he wins — just as he did in 2017.

Focusing on the Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio, Trump said he plans to revoke their Temporary Protected Status — the immigration protection afforded to nationals from Haiti and 15 other countries in turmoil that allows them to temporarily live and work in the U.S. — and deport them back to Haiti.

“Absolutely I’d revoke it and I’d bring them back to their country,” Trump told the NewsNation cable network.

For weeks Springfield has been a focal point of Trump’s and running mate JD Vance’s campaign, with both men and their supporters spreading falsehoods about Haitians eating their neighbor’s pets. The city, according to its website, has about 15,000 immigrants though city officials do not say how many are Haitian. The site does say there are a number of businesses run by the Haitian community and its members are there under legal federal immigration protection.

Trump and Vance have repeatedly said the Haitians in Springfield are there “illegally.” They’ve repeated the unfounded accusations even though city officials have said there is no evidence of Haitians eating pets, and even though the claims have triggered bomb threats that shut down schools and city hall for days.

Springfield, the former president said, has been “overrun” by Haitians. “You can’t do that to people. They have to be removed.”

There are an estimated half-million Haitians in the U.S. eligible to be covered by TPS.

Not the first time

This would not be the first time that Trump has gone after Haitians’ TPS status. In 2017, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced the end of TPS for Haitians, saying that lengthy consultations led the agency to conclude that Haiti no longer met the conditions for designation. The decision came two weeks after the Trump administration had also terminated a similar protection for 2,500 Nicaraguans after nearly 20 years.

The attack on Haitians triggered five federal lawsuits, including a class-action litigation filed by Haitians in New York and Florida in the Eastern District of New York. The suit argued that the DHS secretary at the time, Elaine Dukes, violated procedures and the due process of Haitian TPS holders when the department overrode experts’ reports that conditions in Haiti still warranted the designation. The suit also said the decision was rooted in the president’s “racially discriminatory attitude toward all brown and black people.”

U.S. District Judge William F. Kuntz in New York eventually sided with the Haitians, arguing that the Trump administration had been motivated by politics. He issued a nationwide injunction blocking the administration from terminating the TPS designation in a 145-page ruling in April 2019.

“So once again, he’s made it easier to sue him by opening his big mouth,” Ira Kurzban, the Miami immigration attorney who was among the lawyers who successfully argued the class-action lawsuit, said about Trump. Other immigration lawyers working with the Haitian community agreed that any move to end TPS would result in new lawsuits.

Kurzban said any decision about the status of TPS has to come from the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and must be based on a thorough process that evaluates whether conditions in a country have sufficiently changed to no longer need the status. TPS cannot be terminated for just one group of Haitians living in a particular state. Under federal law, it is the country itself that receives the designation. Its nationals in the U.S., regardless of where they live, would lose the protection if it were to end.

“It’s not just an arbitrary decision, and his stating that makes it totally arbitrary and a capricious decision under the law because what they’re supposed to do is analyze the conditions,” Kurzban said. “A president can give his opinion, but he cannot say, ‘We’re going to terminate TPS.’ ”

Kurzban noted that during Trump’s presidency he launched other attacks against the Haitian community. He called their nation a “shithole” along with other African countries, and said that Haitians “all have AIDS.” Soon after, he canceled a U.S. visa program for low-skilled workers from Haiti. His administration also ended the Haitian Family Reunification parole program that allowed Haitians eligible for residency in the U.S. to wait it out in here rather than in Haiti, while he also aggressively deported Haitians, including those with COVID-19.

“Trump is unabashedly racist and xenophobic. He has targeted Haitians in the past by trying unsuccessfully to remove TPS. He removed Haitians from U.S. agricultural and temporary worker programs in the past,” Kurzban said. “He has no hesitation, like Hitler using the Jews in Germany, as a target for his racism and xenophobia. He thinks he has little to lose because he thinks Haitians will not vote. He is in for a surprise.”

‘A lot of lies’

Marleine Bastien, whose Family Action Movement Network was a plaintiff in the New York TPS lawsuit against the Trump administration, said that just as Haitians “beat him before, we’ll beat him again,” if he tries to end TPS.

“President Trump and his running mate have been spreading a lot of lies, racist and hateful remarks about Haitian immigrants draining the system. The proven fact is that Haitian immigrants contributed to the economic revival of the Springfield economy as confirmed by both the mayor and governor,” said Bastien, a member of the Miami Dade County Commission. “TPS recipients are our teachers, doctors, nurses, farmers, organizers, engineers and others. They contribute to our economy by paying millions in taxes.”

In June, the Biden administration broadened immigration protections for Haitians by redesignating Haiti for TPS for 18 months. Over half-a-million Haitians already living in the United States were made eligible by the administration’s expansion of the federal program due to Haiti’s worsening gang violence and humanitarian crisis. To benefit, Haitians needed to have been in the U.S. as of June 3.

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Conditions in Haiti are far worse today than in 2017 or even in 2010, when President Barack Obama designated Haiti for TPS after the country’s deadly earthquake destroyed much of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and killed more than 300,000 people and left another 1.5 million homeless.

The United Nations’ latest hunger survey said 5.4 million Haitians are struggling to find enough food to eat, while more than 700,000 — about half of them children — are internally displaced after armed gangs forced them out of their homes.

The security situation in Port-au-Prince “remains highly unstable,” Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, said Thursday. Many people are living in overcrowded shelters with limited access to basic services. Humanitarian aid groups in Haiti said this week they are deeply worried about the rising displacement, which has been prompted by the escalating gang violence.

Kurzban and other immigration lawyers had challenged the Trump administration on the procedures they had used to conclude that conditions in Haiti had changed. Homeland Security experts had originally made the determination to continue TPS, but the report was rewritten with another recommendation and without going through the proper channels, the lawyer said.

The author of the 2017 report claiming Haiti no longer merited the designation, Kurzban said, was Gene Hamilton. He is one of the writers of the immigration section of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 2025. Trump has denied having any links to the project.

Kurzban believes that should Trump win, Hamilton and others involved in Project 2025 could join the ranks of the departments of Justice or Homeland Security.

“People had better wake up,” Kurzban said. By constantly raising Springfield and Haitians, Trump is getting the public to focus on immigration rather than “on his terrible debate performance” or other shortcomings, he added.

Kurzban said should Trump return to the White House and move not to renew the protections for Haiti, the ramifications would be devastating.

“He can just take it away and in 60 days they would have to depart the country,” he said. “People have been here a long time and they think they’re secure.”

Haiti, unlike other TPS countries, has benefited from numerous repeated designations that have allowed Haitians, some of whom have been been here since 2010, to live and work without fear of deportation. In 2017, when rumors started that TPS had ended, many Haitians packed up their lives and fled to upstate New York, where they then crossed the border illegally into Canada. After some attempted to cross back into the U.S., they were arrested.

Recalling the chaos, Kurzban said Haitians shouldn’t take anything for granted in this year’s election.

“You’re talking about people who have lived here and now they’re going to be subject to either being picked up or put in removal proceedings.”

This story was originally published October 3, 2024, 3:20 PM.