(Washington, DC) – Since ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti in late July 2026, US authorities have deported hundreds of Haitians back to their country, where they face threats to their lives and safety and receive little to no support, Human Rights Watch said today. The US Senate should urgently pass House-approved legislation that would reinstate TPS for Haitians.
According to Haiti’s National Office for Migration (Office National de la Migration), more than 450 people have been deported from the United States to Haiti since July. Many had lived in the United States for years and were separated from US citizen family members, while others said they had pending asylum claims in the US. Haitian authorities lack the funding, staff, and policy frameworks to safely receive and assist deportees, Haitian government officials told Human Rights Watch.
“The United States is returning people, some with pending asylum claims, to a country that doesn’t have the capacity to protect them from violence, let alone help them find food and shelter,” said Nathalye Cotrino, senior Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The US government should immediately halt these removals.”
Deportation flights to Cap-Haïtien, a city on Haiti’s northern coast whose population has tripled amid a nationwide surge in criminal violence and hunger, have climbed from about once a month to once a week. That city is presently the only viable point of entry for flights because criminal groups have made the airport in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, unsafe.
Human Rights Watch visited Cap-Haïtien from August 24 to 30. Researchers interviewed 44 Haitian deportees who had arrived on the first two deportation flights following the end of TPS, on August 20 and 27, as well as Haitian government officials and international officials involved in receiving them. On August 27, Human Rights Watch was at the airport for the arrival of the deportation flight and documented the reception process firsthand. Researchers also reviewed information from the US and Haitian governments, United Nations agencies, and other credible sources tracking the deportations.
TPS is a mechanism under US law that the government can invoke to prevent deportation to countries that present particularly dangerous conditions until those conditions improve. The United States first granted Haitians TPS in 2010 following a devastating earthquake and has repeatedly extended it since then as violence, humanitarian crises, and widespread human rights abuses have increased. The Trump administration moved to terminate TPS for Haitians in 2025 and after more than a year of litigation, the US Supreme Court ruled on June 25, 2026, that the termination could proceed. TPS for an estimated 330,000 Haitians ended on July 27.
Most people interviewed said they fled Haiti because of the country’s longstanding security and humanitarian crises, which have only worsened over the years. Some left after the 2010 earthquake, but the vast majority left after the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and the deepening violence and instability that followed. Many said they had lived in the United States for several years, including in Florida, New York, Indiana, Massachusetts, Ohio, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Interviewees had worked in construction, health care, manufacturing, hospitality, logistics, retail, or agriculture. Many had formed mixed-status families, with US citizen children born in the United States.
Most said that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had detained them before TPS formally ended and never explained the basis for their detention. Most said that while protected by TPS they had also filed asylum claims. Some said their claims were still pending at the time of their removal, and that they were unable to contact their lawyers or appear before an immigration judge before being deported.
“I don’t understand why,” said a 46-year-old man who was detained one morning as he was leaving home for work in Miami. “I worked, paid taxes, went to my immigration appointments, and waited for my asylum case. Later, they told me that I had a removal order. I had never heard about that order before. I kept asking for a lawyer, but nobody helped me.”
On arrival to Cap-Haïtien, deportees were received at the airport by a small team from Haiti’s National Office for Migration, which leads the reception process, alongside the police, the Haitian Red Cross, and International Organization for Migration (IOM) staff. Officials registered them in a structure built from several converted shipping containers next to the runway, with seating for about 60 people and 2 toilets outside but no running water. Registration consisted of checking each person’s name and identifying information against the flight manifest sent by US authorities, recording their place of birth and other basic personal information, and asking for their immigration status in the United States and recording the information they provided.
Officials then handed out a simple meal, a drink, and at least 10,000 Haitian gourdes (around US$77) in cash assistance and distributed some of the deportees’ belongings, which US authorities sent in bags, while Haitian Red Cross staff offered them the opportunity to call or message their loved ones. Deportees were then transferred by bus to the Departmental Judicial Police Service (Service Départemental de la Police Judiciaire) for additional registration.
Beyond limited assistance in urgent cases, Haitian authorities and humanitarian agencies do not offer sustained shelter, health care, transportation, protection, or reintegration support. After registering, deportees were left to fend for themselves, and many did not know what to do or where to go next. Some returned to their hometowns, but because of the security situation, many instead tried to reach relatives or friends elsewhere in the country, traveling the same day or remaining in Cap-Haïtien for days while waiting for money transfers to make the trip.
“I cannot return to La Saline,” said one deportee from the August 27 flight, describing his Port-au-Prince neighborhood. “Criminals still control the neighborhood. I left because I feared they would kill me, and now I have been sent back to the same danger.”
In ending TPS for Haitians, the Trump administration said that conditions in Haiti had improved sufficiently that the country no longer met the statutory requirements for TPS. Yet the US government’s own assessment underscores the severity of the security situation. The State Department continues to place Haiti at Level 4, “Do Not Travel,” its highest travel advisory level, warning US citizens not to travel there because of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care.
On August 30, the White House “border czar,” Tom Homan, defended the deportations while admitting that he was unfamiliar with conditions in Haiti. “I don’t know the conditions in Haiti. I have never been in Haiti,” he told CNN, adding that the administration was “just enforcing the law.”
A 38-year-old man who used to work in a hotel in Miami and was deported on August 20 said he had been stranded in Cap-Haïtien for over a week trying to raise money to reach relatives in Jacmel, in the southern part of the country. “To reach Jacmel, I may have to travel through areas controlled by criminal groups, where people are stopped, extorted, kidnapped, or killed,” he said. “I fled Haiti to save my life. Now they have sent me back here to die.”
International human rights law prohibits returning anyone to a country where their life or physical integrity would be at risk. In August, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called on the United States to “ensure international protection when there are substantial grounds to believe that [a person’s] return to Haiti would expose them to a serious risk of violations of their rights to life or personal integrity.” It emphasized that all deportation decisions must be individually assessed, comply with due process, and provide access to an effective remedy.
“Deportees are being returned to spreading violence and severe hunger and then left without shelter, safe transportation, or meaningful support,” Cotrino said. “The United States should be protecting these people, not compounding the suffering they have already endured.”
For more details and accounts from victims and witnesses, please see below.
Deportees are being returned to a country facing worsening human rights and humanitarian crises. According to the United Nations, from January 2023 through June 2026, at least 19,380 people were killed in violence involving criminal groups, “self-defense groups,” and government security forces. The annual death toll rose by about 24 percent between 2023 and 2025, from 4,789 to at least 5,915. At least another 3,050 people were killed during the first six months of 2026.
Despite the partial deployment in April of the UN-authorized Gang Suppression Force mandated to support Haitian authorities in fighting criminal groups and restoring security, violence has continued unabated. Criminal groups that once operated mainly in Port-au-Prince have expanded their activities into rural communities in at least five of Haiti’s ten departments. They continue to use sexual violence, including gang rape, to control territory; terrorize and punish residents; and forcibly displace communities. Nearly 1.5 million people are internally displaced, according to the IOM.
The violence has fueled a nationwide humanitarian crisis. More than half of Haiti’s population needs humanitarian assistance and faces acute food insecurity at crisis levels or worse.
Overwhelmed Reception in Cap-Haïtien
US deportation flights currently land in Cap-Haïtien, the capital of Haiti’s Nord department and the country’s second-largest city, which has become a major transportation and humanitarian hub as insecurity increasingly isolates Haiti’s capital. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) prohibits US commercial operators and US-registered civil aircraft from flying below 10,000 feet over Port-au-Prince because of the danger posed by criminal groups’ control of the airport’s surrounding area. In early September, the FAA extended these restrictions until March 2, 2027.
The flights are arriving in a city already struggling to accommodate tens of thousands of people displaced by violence and insecurity. Haiti’s Institute of Statistics and Informatics (Institut Haïtien de Statistique et d’Informatique) estimated Cap-Haïtien’s population at 300,000 in July 2024, while the IOM recorded an additional 50,648 internally displaced people there by May 2026.
Mayor Michel Saint-Croix told Human Rights Watch that the population had more than tripled in two years and now exceeded one million due to the arrival of internally displaced people and Haitians forcibly returned from other countries, primarily the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos. He said this growth had placed further pressure on already inadequate electricity, water, housing, health care, and municipal services.
The city has struggled with an unreliable electricity supply for nearly a decade. Municipal officials said that state-provided electricity had been effectively unavailable since 2021, forcing households, businesses, and public institutions to rely on costly diesel generators or private solar systems, while piped water remained severely limited. From March through June 2026, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification classified Cap-Haïtien as facing crisis-level food insecurity. A Ministry of Public Health and Population (Ministère de la Santé Publique et de la Population) official said that the city faces significant gaps in emergency, maternity, and pediatric health care.
Officials from Haiti’s National Office for Migration said US authorities gave them about two days’ notice of the August 20 and 27 flights. In both cases, however, the passenger lists from the United States did not accurately reflect the number of people who arrived. The August 20 flight carried 161 people, significantly more than initially indicated, while 57 arrived on August 27.
Human Rights Watch reviewed the manifests for both flights and found that they listed each deportee’s name, date of birth, gender, nationality, and A-number (which US immigration authorities use to identify and track a person’s immigration record). The manifests did not contain the grounds for removal or information about deportees’ immigration status, needs, family contacts, or belongings.
“We have no way of knowing in advance whether someone will arrive with an urgent medical condition, a disability, a protection concern, or another vulnerability,” a Haitian migration official said. “Without that information, it is even harder for us to prepare to receive deportees and coordinate with other institutions to provide even minimal assistance.”
Migration officials said that US authorities told them they planned to send as many as two deportation flights a week, each carrying approximately 200 people. The officials said Haiti’s government lacked the staff, infrastructure, and resources to receive deportees safely at that pace.
Human Rights Watch observed the reception of the August 27 flight. The National Office for Migration led the process with support from the IOM, notifying other supporting institutions by telephone or WhatsApp.
Authorities registered deportees in a converted shipping container with about 60 seats and 2 toilets, only one of which worked and neither of which had running water. Shortly before the US flight arrived, another flight brought 105 Haitians deported from The Bahamas, exceeding the container’s capacity. Officials erected a tent with about 30 additional seats in the adjacent dusty yard, but neither space offered privacy for individualized assessments of health concerns, protection risks, or other vulnerabilities.
Several deportees said that, while held in US immigration detention facilities, they had gone for hours without food or water and days without bathing or changing clothes. Many arrived wearing the same light gray sweatpants, T-shirts, and blue shoes that US authorities had issued upon their detention, with few or no personal belongings.
Most said that property they had with them when detained, including clothing, jewelry, cash, identity documents and Haitian passports, mobile phones, and credit cards, was not returned to them upon their arrival. Haitian authorities responsible for receiving deportees said that deportees’ belongings did not always arrive with them. Human Rights Watch also observed that, following the August 27 flight, the few bags of belongings unloaded from the aircraft were taken directly from the tarmac to the area where deportees were received.
A 31-year-old caregiver for older people in Florida said he had TPS and a pending asylum claim when ICE detained him as he left his home in early August. Authorities first took him to the Krome North Service Processing Center, an ICE detention center, and then transferred him on August 18 to the Broward Transitional Center, but the belongings taken from him upon detention did not accompany him. At Broward, he asked to complete a form documenting the missing property. “I had a black backpack containing my passport, Social Security card, driver’s license, and bank card, as well as a jacket, a raincoat, my phone, and chargers,” he said. “None of it came with me, so I asked them to put that in writing and kept the form.”
“An ICE officer told me they were deporting me to Haiti and that my belongings would be returned there,” he said. “But, as you can see, nothing arrived.”
Migration officials gave each deportee a hot meal, a drink, and 10,000 gourdes (around $77) before the Departmental Judicial Police Service transported them on a privately hired bus to the central police station for additional registration.
The Departmental Judicial Police Service director said that US authorities provided only basic biographical information, without copies of criminal records where relevant, supporting documentation, or a channel to verify information about the people being deported. Police could hold deportees for further checks but rarely did so because they lacked the information and resources to verify criminal records in Haiti or abroad.
From that point, deportees were left on their own to find shelter and make arrangements to try to reach their communities. Deportees said they relied on relatives or money wires for accommodation and onward travel. Some, particularly those from the Ouest and Artibonite departments, remained stranded for a couple of days because they could not safely return home or afford transportation, or because they feared crossing areas controlled by criminal groups.
Human Rights Watch interviewed officials from nine Haitian government institutions with responsibilities relevant to the deportees, including agencies responsible for migration, health, child protection, education, labor, identification, justice, and local government. All said Haitian authorities lack the capacity to provide shelter, continuing food assistance, safe onward transportation, sustained health or psychosocial care, or an established channel with US authorities to help deportees recover missing belongings. They also described additional gaps in available services.
Officials from the Institute of Social Welfare and Research (Institut du Bien-Être Social et de Recherches) said that when children are deported, they verify whether the children arrive with a parent or guardian and make efforts to reunify unaccompanied children with relatives, arranging temporary accommodation through private partner shelters when necessary. However, they said the agency had no space to conduct private interviews with children and lacked a shelter of its own or a mechanism to monitor children after reunification.
Officials at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (Ministère des Affaires Sociales et du Travail) said they had no funds, food, clothing, or shelter dedicated to deportees. Officials from the National Identification Office (Office National d’Identification) said there was no expedited process for deportees without identity documents, forcing some to wait one to three months to obtain a birth certificate and national identification card. Officials at the Ministry of National Education and Vocational Training (Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale et de la Formation Professionnelle) said they had no plan to integrate deported children, including those previously educated in English or Portuguese.
Officials from Haitian institutions consistently said that the Haitian government has no plan in place to support deportees’ longer-term reintegration.
US Deportations Following the Termination of TPS
After terminating TPS for Haitians, US authorities sharply increased deportation flights to Haiti. Between August 20 and September 17, ICE sent 5 consecutive weekly flights to Cap-Haïtien, a total of 474 people, according to Haitian authorities. Before TPS ended, the United States had generally operated about one deportation flight to Haiti each month.
Many deportees interviewed were visibly distressed, and most asked not to be identified, citing fear, shame, or distrust following their treatment by US authorities. Human Rights Watch has used pseudonyms to protect their identities.
Most interviewees said they were originally from the Ouest Department, including Port-au-Prince, Carrefour, Delmas, and Léogâne. Others were from Artibonite, Sud, Sud-Est, and Nord-Ouest departments. Interviewees said they had arrived in the United States between 2012 and 2024 and lived there for 2 to 14 years before being deported. Many had formed families that included people of different nationalities or immigration statuses, and left behind partners, close relatives, and children born in the United States, Brazil, or Mexico, where some had previously lived. Their deportations often separated their families and, in some cases, left spouses in the United States solely responsible for raising their children and covering rent and other household expenses.
Pierre R., 38, deported on August 20, said he had lived in Florida since December 2019 and worked at the same hotel for nearly seven years. He began by cleaning and carrying supplies and was later tasked with training new employees. “People knew me there,” he said. “My coworkers knew my wife and son, my neighbors knew and supported us, and we attended church on Sundays.”
His wife and 5-year-old son, a US citizen who had recently started school, remain in Florida. “I worked so that he could grow up without the fear, violence, and uncertainty that I had known in Haiti,” he said. “I did not get to hug my son. My wife is now alone with the rent, the bills, and our child. She tells me that he still waits for me and asks whether I will be there when he comes home from school.”
All of those interviewed said they had held TPS—Human Rights Watch specifically sought out such individuals—and all said they had also sought asylum, lawful permanent residence, or another form of immigration status. Many said their applications remained pending when US authorities detained them and subsequently deported them.
Human Rights Watch checked available information on interviewees’ immigration proceedings through the Executive Office for Immigration Review and found that some had been ordered removed before their deportation. When asked about these orders, they said ICE had not shown them their removal orders and that they had believed their immigration cases remained pending. Because none had access to their immigration records, Human Rights Watch could not independently verify the full status and history or their accounts of their immigration status and proceedings in the United States.
Interviewees said that ICE or other law enforcement authorities detained them as they left home for work, during lunch breaks, following traffic stops, or when they reported for scheduled immigration check-ins. Most were detained before TPS ended on July 27. Most said ICE officers offered no clear explanation at the time, although some were later told that they had removal orders they had not previously known about, while others said ICE referenced the impending termination of TPS even though it had not yet taken effect.
“They did not care that I was legally married, that my husband was a US citizen, that my application [for permanent residence] was pending, or even that I was caring for him,” said Lucie D., 47, who had lived in Miami for 10 years.
Lucie said she had been a TPS beneficiary for several years and had been married for six years to her US citizen husband, for whom she was the primary caregiver because he was seriously ill. After the US government announced that it would terminate TPS for Haitians, she applied for permanent residence based on her marriage to a US citizen. ICE detained her on August 18, when she went to an interview scheduled as part of that process.
“They did not give me time to call my lawyer,” she said. “They only told me that I had been issued a removal order many years earlier and that they were detaining me and sending me to Haiti.”
Once detained, most interviewees said authorities did not allow them to contact their lawyers or appear before an immigration judge, while many received little or no information about their pending asylum claims, the grounds for their detention, or how they could challenge their deportation.
Claire J., 24, who worked as a caregiver and was training to become a certified nursing assistant in Florida, said ICE detained her in early July when she reported for a scheduled check-in. “I fled Haiti in August 2023, when criminal groups attacked my neighborhood,” she said. “The violence forced me to abandon my studies and everything I had been working toward. I reached Florida later that year, applied for asylum, and received TPS. In Miami, I found work caring for an 86-year-old man in his home in Coral Gables.”
“ICE did not explain why they were detaining me,” she said. “I told them that my asylum application was still pending and that I was studying. They didn’t care. They wouldn’t even let me call a lawyer.”
Interviewees said they had spent approximately one to six months in US immigration custody, sometimes moving between several detention facilities. They reported spending time mostly at the Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami and the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, as well as at other detention centers in Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.
Across these facilities, interviewees described abusive conditions, including severe overcrowding, inadequate food, lack of sanitation, denial of adequate health care, difficulties obtaining medication or contacting relatives, and verbal and psychological mistreatment. Their accounts are consistent with abuses previously documented in some of the same facilities. In July 2025, Human Rights Watch documented overcrowding, evidence of inadequate health care, degrading treatment, and prolonged detention at Krome, Broward, and the Federal Detention Center in Miami.
“There were so many people in the cells that there was not enough room for everyone to lie down,” said Jean F., 46, a poultry processing worker deported on August 27. “We had to take turns lying down.” He said that ICE held him at Krome for three months. “The food was scarce and of very poor quality, sometimes undercooked, and even the smell could be disgusting,” he said. “People became sick because of the food, but it was difficult to obtain medicine or even see a doctor.”
Several interviewees said that, worn down by conditions, pressured by ICE officers, and seeing no viable alternative, they signed documents accepting or acknowledging their transfer to Haiti. Two others said they agreed to be returned to Mexico, where they had previously lived and held legal residency, but US authorities sent them to Haiti instead. Only one of them managed to retain a document confirming this.
Among those deported on August 27 were a Haitian couple and their two sons, ages 5 and 3; the younger child was a US citizen. “My partner, our older son, and I had TPS and had also applied for asylum,” said Marc D., the 45-year-old father. “We were waiting for a court hearing scheduled for 2029. When TPS ended, we were afraid ICE would detain us, so we went to Canada to seek asylum. Three days later, Canadian authorities sent us back to the United States and handed us over to ICE.”
ICE detained the family in New York, separated Marc from his partner and children, and did not allow him to contact a lawyer, he said. “When I told an officer that my youngest son was a US citizen, he told me: ‘Your son can stay, but the state will take custody of him, and you will lose him.’”
Those interviewed said they had no criminal convictions in the US. In an August 24 post on X, the US Department of Homeland Security reported that 15 of the 161 Haitians deported on the August 20 flight had criminal convictions. None of the people interviewed were included in this list.
Recommendations
To the US government:
- Immediately halt all deportations to Haiti, in accordance with the principle of nonrefoulement, as long as generalized conditions make returns unsafe for everyone.
- Place people in immigration detention only when necessary and proportionate, and for the shortest duration to effectuate a legitimate aim. Use the least invasive alternatives to detention where possible. Ensure that individuals in immigration detention are able to confer with legal counsel, including by providing private meeting spaces, sufficient phone access, and timely information about legal and procedural rights during removal proceedings.
- Guarantee Haitians’ right to due process in immigration proceedings, including adequate notice and an opportunity to contest their potential removal, with a hearing before an immigration judge where appropriate.
- If deportations continue, ensure deportees’ phones, cash, documents, and belongings are returned in full, and provide Haitian authorities well in advance of each flight with information on deportees, strictly with their free and informed consent, that includes their medical needs and, where consistent with ensuring confidentiality and protection concerns, other vulnerabilities that the deportees choose to divulge to receiving authorities.
To the US Congress:
- The Senate should urgently pass House-approved legislation that would extend TPS for Haitians through 2029.
- Hold public oversight hearings on the detention and deportation of Haitians and require the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to disclose relevant policies, records, and data, including on access to counsel and immigration judges, the handling of pending protection claims, family separations, and procedures for safeguarding and recovering deportees’ property.
To the Haitian Government:
- Develop, with donor and UN support, a coordinated national reception and reintegration plan that includes individualized risk assessments, temporary shelter, safe onward transportation, and sustained food and assistance.
- Create an expedited procedure for issuing identity documents to deportees and expand the government’s child-protection capacity at the point of reception.
- Formally and publicly request the United States to limit flight frequency and volume, at least until adequate reception infrastructure is in place.
To Canada, the EU and member states, and Latin American and Caribbean governments:
- Provide the IOM and other humanitarian actors in Haiti with predictable, dedicated funding to support Haitian authorities in expanding reception services in Cap-Haïtien, including trained staff, individualized needs assessments, emergency accommodation, medical and psychosocial referrals, safe onward transportation, case management, and longer-term reintegration assistance.
- Support Haitian authorities in developing and implementing a coordinated national reception and reintegration plan.
- Contribute to Haiti’s UN-coordinated humanitarian response plan.
- Refrain from returning Haitians to Haiti or to countries, including the United States, that are likely to return them to Haiti. Canada should also refrain from returning Haitian asylum seekers to the United States under the Safe Third Country Agreement and ensure that they have access to a full and fair asylum procedure in Canada.
- Ensure that any renewal of the authorization of the Gang Suppression Force provides the personnel and resources necessary to support Haitian authorities in protecting the population and addressing criminal violence, while maintaining robust human rights safeguards, independent oversight, transparent reporting, and effective accountability mechanisms.