Trump administration to expand deportation flights to Haiti
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
By HAMED ALEAZIZ, ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS and FRANCES ROBLES
The Trump administration plans to step up deportation flights to Haiti, according to documents obtained by The New York Times, a move intended to more quickly expel thousands of Haitians whose legal status expired this summer with the end of a humanitarian program.
The administration aims to increase the pace of flights from once a month to once a week, the documents show, potentially allowing for the deportation of hundreds more people per month. The flights are expected to continue weekly in the near term, though a U.S. official cautioned that the plans were still being finalized.
A plane of about 60 or 70 deportees arrived in the city of Cap Haitien just before noon local time last Thursday, according to Human Rights Watch, which had personnel on hand at the airport to monitor and document the situation.
Just before the plane landed, another deportation flight arrived, this one carrying an unexpectedly large number of people who had been deported from the Bahamas. The larger surge outstripped the ability of the Haitian migration agency and the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration to receive them, said Nathalye Cotrino, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, who was at the airport.
“For now, the U.S. deportees are waiting in a tent,” Cotrino said. “People arrived very confused and upset, and a few were aggressive, so it is a delicate situation to manage.”
Bill O’Neill, the United Nations’ human rights expert for Haiti, said the massive influx of deportees in a single day was unmanageable.
“This is insane. There is no way the Haitian government can handle this,” he said. “There is nowhere for these people to go.”
O’Neill said a massacre last week in Kenscoff, outside the capital of Port-au-Prince, underscores how dangerous the situation is. “No country should be forcing Haitians to return to Haiti, because there is no guarantee of a safe, dignified and sustainable return to the country,” he said.
The push to expel Haitians illegally in the United States comes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that the administration was free to end Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status, a program that blocks the deportation of people from designated countries deemed too dangerous to accept its citizens. The Trump administration concluded that Haiti is safe enough to be removed from the protected list, despite widespread lawlessness and gang activity in the country.
The State Department has warned U.S. travelers not to visit Haiti “due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest and limited healthcare.” The Federal Aviation Administration banned commercial airlines from landing in the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, earlier this year, citing “ongoing instability.” There have been reports of gangs firing on aircraft trying to land at the Port-au-Prince airport.
“There is not even a vestige of a state in control,” said Daniel Foote, the Biden administration’s special envoy to Haiti, who resigned in 2021 over the deportations of Haitian migrants. Foote, who remains in contact with people on the ground in Haiti, said the deportations would likely include many Haitian immigrants who have spent most of their lives in the United States and will now be sent to a dangerous environment.
“Not only has it not gotten better, it hasn’t stabilized,” Foote said. “It just continues to get worse and worse and worse.”
Foote questioned how the Trump administration assessed that Haiti was now safe enough for an increase of deportations. In fact, internal emails and documents obtained by the Times indicate that the Homeland Security Department decided to terminate the protections in June 2025 without obtaining input from the State Department, which typically is responsible for assessing the conditions in foreign countries.
Deporting hundreds more to Haiti will hasten deportations, but it will still take time to reach the more than 300,000 Haitians who had been allowed to legally live and work in the United States under the expired protected status. The administration will most likely need to further increase the pace to expel every Haitian now in the country illegally. The administration has offered people in the country illegally a plane ticket and $2,600 in cash to self-deport using an app.
“The federal courts have ordered the Haitian illegals must leave the U.S. and we have generously made free flights available,” said Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, who declined to provide specific details on deportation flights to Haiti.
Seeking safer ways to land aircraft than arriving at Port-au-Prince, U.S. officials have flown migrants about 120 miles away to the city of Cap Haitien, which is where the new flights will land. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been flying Haitians to the much smaller city once a month, according to Savi Arvey, the director of policy for immigration issues at Human Rights First, who oversees a project that tracks the deportation flights.
On Aug. 20, ICE said it deported more than 160 Haitians to Cap Haitien. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security, which houses ICE, pointed to more than a dozen Haitians on the flight with criminal records. The last deportation flight before that one was in July, according to Arvey.
The journey from Cap Haitien to Port-au-Prince used to be a six-hour drive, but it is now considered extremely unsafe. Gangs control the main highway connecting the two cities, extracting tolls and sometimes kidnapping the passengers. Deportees stranded in Cap Haitien may choose to stay there, as the northern part of the country is safer.
The United Nations said 3,050 people were killed in Haiti during the first six months of 2026. Much of that violence is centered in Port-au-Prince and the surrounding area. Dozens were killed this week alone in Kenscoff, an upper-class community on the outskirts of the capital.
About 1.5 million people have fled their homes for other cities, and nearly 250,000 people in Haiti’s capital are living in displacement camps, such as public schools and government buildings.
Temporary Protected Status “was never designed to be permanent, yet previous administrations have used it as a de facto amnesty program for decades,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement last week. “Under the strong leadership of President Donald J. Trump, we are putting America first again.”
The agency said it would not confirm future deportation flights for security reasons.
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