Some Cape residents are being impacted by the end of temporary protected status for Haitian immigrants. The magnitude of the fallout is still unclear, but so far, we know at least some local Haitians’ lives are being upended as a result of the loss of legal status.
The United States offered temporary protected status, or TPS, to Haitians starting in 2010 after a major earthquake devastated the region. TPS allowed Haitians to live and work legally in the United States. Since the earthquake, the government has extended TPS several times, as the country remained unsafe.
The Department of Homeland Security told NPR it ended TPS for Haitians because conditions in the country have improved enough where it is safe for Haitians to return.
But at the same time, the State Department has issued a Level 4 travel advisory—the highest level—for Haiti, warning people not to travel there due to high rates of violent crime, rampant gang activity and other safety concerns.
More than 45,000 Haitians who had TPS live in Massachusetts, according to a press release from Governor Maura Healey’s office. The Supreme Court ruled in June that the Trump administration could end TPS for Haitians. TPS officially expired Monday, July 27.
The Immigrants’ Assistance Center in New Bedford serves more than 300 Haitian families living in the New Bedford area, said the organization’s president, Helena DaSilva Hughes. She estimated that between 75 and 80 percent of those clients were TPS holders.
The end of TPS has been devastating for many of her Haitian clients, DaSilva Hughes said.
For example, she said, one of her clients is a mother fleeing domestic violence. She has a four-year-old daughter who is a U.S. citizen, and she is terrified of what could happen if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement tries to detain and deport her.
The mother has already been let go by her employer now that she no longer has work authorization, DaSilva Hughes said, and she is worried about becoming homeless. The woman sends money home to her mother in Haiti and calls every day to make sure she is still alive, DaSilva Hughes said.
“To live under this tremendous stress of her and her daughter getting picked up by ICE—it’s just such a horrible situation,” DaSilva Hughes said. “I’m just mentioning one case. We see these cases over and over again.”
Immigrants’ Assistance Center is able to help in these situations, but only to a certain extent, DaSilva Hughes explained. In the case of the mother, staff at the center helped her come up with a plan for who will care for her daughter if she is detained by ICE. They got a family member with a green card to write a caregiver affidavit, which then will get distributed to the child’s doctor and school.
Some free legal aid is available to Haitians who lost their legal status through the Massachusetts Office for Refugees and Immigrants. DaSilva Hughes said she believes some families could get permission to keep living in the United States under the Violence Against Women Act.
“If we can at least get one or two or three women that are going through domestic violence that at least through VAWA will be able to be on the path to get a green card, that's great,” she said.
DaSilva Hughes also warned Haitians searching for legal advice online to beware of scams.
“They're so vulnerable right now that they want to believe that there's something that can be done,” she said.
But in many cases, DaSilva Hughes said, she is not hopeful that anything can be done.
Haitian workers on the Cape have also lost their jobs due to the end of TPS.
That’s according to Jean Claude Butter, an elder at the Canaan Seventh-Day Adventist Church in West Yarmouth. Butter came to the Cape from Haiti more than 25 years ago and has been working in the local healthcare sector. Most recently, he has served as a Haitian-Creole interpreter for Cape Cod Healthcare.
Butter started a food pantry at his church that provides culturally relevant foods for Haitians and others from the Caribbean. He said the pantry opened in 2020 to help feed people as food insecurity rose during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“That time, the demand was extremely high,” he said. “We’re about to see the same problem now.”
Butter said the food pantry is bracing for the increase in demand as local Haitians lose their work authorizations.
“The biggest challenge for us right now is getting ready for more people to show up, because some people start losing not only their status, but some of them already lost their jobs,” he said. “It looks like it’s going to get worse.”
The food pantry—including a community garden with culturally significant produce like okra, squash and scotch bonnet peppers—is open every Tuesday from 11 AM to 2 PM at 204 Route 28 in West Yarmouth. Butter said they might be able to make some home deliveries of food as well. Clients can call 508-266-1439 for more information, according to a list of food pantries compiled by Barnstable County.
Broadreach Healthcare in Chatham employs a number of Haitian workers, according to its president and CEO Bill Bogdanovich. He said all of his Haitian staff have additional work authorizations that are not TPS, so he hasn’t had to lay anyone off. But those workers are still being impacted in other ways, he said.
“The loss of TPS of and by itself is not impacting their status,” Bogdanovich said. “I know that they have friends, family members in some cases, that is not the case for, so it’s impacting their lives.”
