Border czar Tom Homan on Sunday defended the Trump administration’s ongoing deportations to Haiti despite the State Department’s own advisory warning Americans against traveling to the Caribbean country. In an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” Homan told host Dana Bash that the administration is simply complying with the end of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants.
“The temporary protective status is supposed to be temporary and as long as I’ve been around for over 40 years, it seems like it’s never temporary,” Homan said. “This is an order of the court. They were ordered removed and ICE is removing them.” The TPS program, first enacted by Congress in 1990, gave the Department of Homeland Security the power to allow migrants to stay in the U.S. due to unsafe conditions in their homeland as the result of a natural disaster, armed conflict or other “extraordinary and temporary” conditions. In June, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Mullin v. Doe that President Donald Trump could end the legal status of more than 1 million migrants who were permitted to live and work in the U.S. due to crises in their home countries.
While Haiti was first designated part of the TPS program in 2010 following a massive earthquake, the State Department continues to have a Level 4 - Do Not Travel advisory for Haiti, citing the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest and limited health care. Last week alone, the United Nations estimated at least 47 people were killed and 22 others injured in an overnight gang raid on a neighborhood near Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital.
It’s kind of bizarre that the Trump administration is dumping hundreds, if not thousands, of Haitians (including children) back into a country it has long described as a “shithole country” and deemed unsafe to travel to (with good reason given the rampant gang violence there). But to be fair, Democrats are just as much to blame for this situation as Republicans. It starts with the Democrats’ grossly misguided use of TPS, which was originally intended to provide temporary protection to people following a natural disaster or other extraordinary circumstance while conditions in their home country improved. Instead, Democrats seemed less interested in actually improving conditions in Haiti than in grandstanding on the issue and using TPS as a political talking point to score points with their base. Then there’s the Haitian government itself, which has long struggled with corruption and has done little to effectively address the country’s widespread poverty, food insecurity and rampant gang violence.
Finally, there’s Trump and his enablers. While SCOTUS has granted the administration the legal authority to end TPS (rightfully so), it appears to have done little to negotiate with other countries willing to take in these people or guarantee their safety upon return. Even more troubling, there seems to have been little effort by Trump and Co. to prioritize Haitians who have stayed out of trouble, earned an education or established legitimate careers while living in the United States. Whatever one thinks of TPS, treating everyone as though they have the same circumstances or deserve the same fate is hardly a thoughtful immigration policy.
RELATED: Haiti’s Troubled Path to Development
RELATED: Haiti’s Troubled Path to Development
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