US Deports 161 Haitians to Cap-Haitien After Court Allows End of TPS Programme
The United States deported more than 160 people to Haiti on Thursday (August 20, 2026) in the first such flight since the Trump administration won a legal battle to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for about 350,000 Haitians.
The plane landed in the northern Haitian city of Cap-Haitien because the main international airport in Port-au-Prince is considered too dangerous. The U.S. government currently prohibits commercial flights to Haiti's capital through early September due to ongoing gang violence.
The deportees wore white clothing, and many covered their faces for safety as journalists filmed their arrival. Nearly all declined to speak, with some fearing they could be targeted by gangs that control an estimated 70% of Port-au-Prince and large areas beyond.
The group included TPS holders and Haitians who had served prison sentences, said Jean Negot Bonheur Delva, director general of Haiti's National Office of Migration.
“It is not the Haitian state that asks for them to be sent back,” he said. “Our mission is to welcome migrants of forced return. We welcome them with the aim of accompanying them to their home.”
He said several deportees planned to travel to Haiti's southern region, a dangerous journey because gangs control main routes and are known to randomly open fire on vehicles passing through. Others are going to the western region, he added.
“There is one migrant who knows nothing about Haiti because he said he was coming from the Dominican Republic; that's where he was born,” Mr. Delva said. He said the government would attempt to reunite him with any potential relatives in Haiti or the Dominican Republic, where his mother and father live.
Immigration officials in Haiti on Thursday offered deportees a maximum of $65 and something to eat and drink. “Those who cannot reach their homes today, we will host them in secure spaces, and the next day the process will continue until all migrants return home as they should,” Mr. Delva said.
Mr. Delva did not say how many of the 161 deportees were TPS holders who had been living and working legally in the U.S. since 2010.
In late June, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the TPS programme to end, affecting some 1 million people from more than a dozen countries. The cases went back to lower courts, but by late July, the government had not extended work permits for Haitians. On August 5, a federal judge in Washington, DC, lifted an order preventing deportations of Haitians with TPS, a formality after the Supreme Court ruling.
Activists have warned that Haiti is too dangerous and lacks resources to help those being deported to a country of nearly 12 million people, more than half of whom need humanitarian assistance due to surging gang violence, poverty, hunger, and conflict. Gang violence has already displaced a record 1.5 million people across Haiti, where more than 3,100 people were reported killed from January to June and another 1,189 injured, according to UN statistics.
One deportee, Jean Diane Louis, briefly spoke to The Associated Press as he arrived in Cap-Haitien. He said he left Haiti when he was 5 years old, his family lives in New York City, and he was sentenced to 19 years in prison for an unspecified crime he asserted he did not commit. “Then ICE came and took me without questioning me,” he said. “They just sent me here.”
As gang violence persists, Haitian migrants in the U.S. continue to be arrested and deported. On Thursday, U.S. authorities arrested a popular Haitian pastor at a gas station in Springfield, Ohio, according to Springfield G92, a faith-based group supporting Haitian immigrants.
