Border czar Tom Homan defended the Trump administration’s recent deportations to Haiti on Sunday, even as the State Department warns Americans not to travel to the Caribbean nation “for any reason.”
During an interview on CNN, host Dana Bash asked Homan about two deportation flights to Haiti over the past two weeks. The flights came after the Supreme Court allowed the administration to end Temporary Protected Status for Haiti in June, making roughly 350,000 Haitians who were permitted to live and work in the U.S. vulnerable to arrest and removal from the country.
Bash noted that Ambassador Jennifer Locetta, a Trump administration official and the U.S. emissary to the United Nations for political affairs, had described conditions in Haiti as “dire” earlier this week.
“Why is the Trump administration knowingly sending Haitians, including many who’ve lived in the U.S. legally under Temporary Protected Status, into the danger that they describe?” Bash asked Homan.
“We’re returning deportees to their home country,” Homan replied. “I’m not in the loop on this specific incident ... but when people are deported, they can’t stay here, they’re gonna go home.”
Bash noted that the administration is moving to end TPS — a decades-old program that allows eligible nationals of certain countries to remain in the U.S. — even while conditions in immigrants’ home countries are still unsafe.
Homan complained that TPS appeared to be “never temporary” and noted that the Supreme Court had allowed termination in June.
In a third attempt to elicit a different response, Bash asked whether Homan, “as a human,” felt comfortable sending people back to a country ravaged by violence.
“Look, the bottom line is they’ve been ordered removed,” Homan replied. “I don’t know the conditions in Haiti. I’ve never been to Haiti. I don’t know if you have. But look, the judge made a decision ... and they need to go home.”
“We’re just enforcing the law,” Homan added. “And we’re doing it in a way that the American people voted for.”
The State Department currently lists Haiti under a Level 4 travel advisory, warning Americans not to travel there “for any reason.”
“U.S. citizens are at risk due to crime, terrorism, kidnapping, unrest, and limited health care,” the department says on its website.
Haiti, which shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, is in the midst of a severe political and humanitarian crisis. Armed gangs control or contest large parts of Port-au-Prince, the capital, while the government struggles to maintain order.
Recently, 47 people were killed in a gang attack in Kenscoff, a farming community. Among those killed was a 70-year-old man whose body was set alight by gang members.
Nearly 1.5 million people have been displaced across Haiti in recent years, in a country with a population of about 12 million. More than 3,000 people were killed between January and June, according to the United Nations.
Amidst the unrest, deportations to Haiti are expected to increase, with flights scheduled to expand from once a month to once a week, The New York Times reported this week.
About 200 people were deported to Haiti on two separate flights over the past two weeks, according to the Trump administration and a human rights group.
“We are deeply concerned about the safety of Haitians in Haiti and those being returned to a country where the government cannot currently guarantee their protection,” Guerline Jozef, executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, said in a statement shared with The Independent last week.
“The Haitian government must explain clearly what measures it has put in place to protect people across the country, including those being deported back to Haiti,” she added. “If the government cannot provide that protection, it must engage its U.S. counterparts and request an immediate moratorium on deportations. The United States must halt deportation flights to Haiti and provide protection for Haitians in the United States until it is safe for people to return.”
The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, has promoted the deportation flights.
In a recent update headlined “HOME SWEET HAITI,” the agency said a flight on August 20 carried 162 immigrants — including “pedophiles, gang members, drug traffickers, and violent assailants” — back to Haiti.
“TPS was never designed to be permanent, yet previous administrations have used it as a de facto amnesty program for decades,” Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a press release. “Under the strong leadership of President Donald J. Trump, we are putting America first again.”
Multiple recent polls indicate that many Americans oppose Trump’s handling of immigration, once one of his strongest issues.
A YouGov survey conducted this month found that 53 percent of respondents disapproved of the administration’s handling of immigration, while 40 percent approved — Trump’s lowest-ever rating on the issue, according to the pollster.
