Congress created Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the Immigration Act of 1990 for nationals of specifically designated countries confronting an ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster or extraordinary and temporary conditions.
Haiti was first designated for TPS in 2010 following a devastating earthquake, with the Obama administration determining that Haitian nationals could not safely return home. The most recent extension and re-designation came in 2024, 14 years later, and focused on civil unrest rather than the earthquake.
In 2021, data from American Community Survey for the year 2017 revealed legal Haitian immigrants had an incarceration rate of 282 per 100,000 legal Haitian immigrants, which was 26% below that of all legal immigrants who had an incarceration rate of 380 per 100,000 all legal immigrants.
Illegal Haitian immigrants had an incarceration rate about 4.4% above that of all illegal immigrants. The Cato Institute did not have estimates of Haitian crime in subsequent generations, but Haitian immigrants had a relatively low incarceration rate at the time.
In 2025, the Trump administration moved to terminate TPS for Haiti, concluding that the continued presence of over 330,000 Haitian TPS beneficiaries was not in the U.S. national interest.
These terminations are being challenged in court and the ultimate outcome of these lawsuits remains unclear.
But last week, by a bipartisan vote of 224-204, Congress approved Rep. Laura Gillen's (D-New York) H.R. 1689, which she filed to push back on the Trump administration's attempts to terminate the program. The bill would extend TPS for Haiti for the next three years.
Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), thinks the 10 Republicans and one independent who voted with all the Democrats to pass it in the House need to understand that many Haitians have been in the U.S. on TPS since 2010.
"That was 16 years ago," he notes. "Haiti was not paradise before the [earthquake] struck; it has never been paradise. But that is not the purpose of Temporary Protective Status."
Mehlman says the program is meant to help when some unforeseen disaster makes it more difficult for foreigners to return home, but "this is typical of what happens when TPS is granted," he adds.
"The people who are granted TPS never really had any intention of returning home. They keep lobbying for extension after extension after extension, long after whatever the triggering event was," the FAIR spokesman explains. "We do need to put an end to it, whether it's Haitians or some other nationality. Temporary should mean temporary."
He says the bill will not make it through the Senate.
