MIAMI — By the time Jenny Bellus was born in April 2023, she had already traveled thousands of miles.
A month before she was born, her parents and 7-year-old sister had legally entered the United States through the U.S.-Mexico border. Fleeing racial discrimination, the family had emigrated from Chile, where they settled since leaving Haiti in 2017.
Bellus is a U.S. citizen. She knows no other country beyond the United States. Neither she nor her Chilean-born sister have ever been to their parents’ home country, rife with gang violence and political instability. But now, she might face another long journey before she has even learned to speak.
That’s because the Trump administration this week rolled back an extension of Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status, a federal program that has shielded Bellus’ parents and sister from deportation. “I don’t feel safe. I don’t feel good,” said Rose-Myrlene Elmond, 30, Bellus’ mother, the uncertainty and fear making her voice tremble.
Jenny Bellus, 22 months old, with her mother Rose-Myrlene Elmond, a TPS holder, during a press conference called by the Family Action Network Movement to discuss the roll back of Haiti TPS by the Trump administration. (Miami Herald photo by: Pedro Portal)
Bellus’ family members, who live in Miami-Dade County, are among the nearly 521,000 Haitians who have been granted deportation protections through TPS. The federal program also lets beneficiaries work in the U.S. legally.
On Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem revoked an additional 18 months of protections that Biden-era agency chief Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had granted Haitian beneficiaries. The protections will now run out on August 3 unless Noem extends them. The Trump administration ended TPS protections for Venezuela last month.
“President Trump and Secretary Noem are returning TPS to its original status: temporary,” a Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement announcing the roll back.
Now, Bellus’ family’s future in the U.S. is in question. And their prospects if they are returned to Haiti are even more uncertain: A powerful earthquake in 2021 destroyed her parents’ hometown of Les Cayes and other parts of southern Haiti. It killed over 2,000 people and injured more than 12,000 others.
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Marleine Bastien said she is outraged by the Trump administration’s decision to roll back Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. (Miami Herald photo by: Pedro Portal)
In South Florida, the heart of the Haitian community in the United States, the announcement has caused fear and indignation. TPS beneficiaries and advocates have denounced the decision, saying Haiti continues to be unsafe amid extreme gang violence, rising hunger and crumbling public institutions.
South Florida community leaders have compared deporting Haitians back to the Caribbean country to a death sentence, with Rep. Frederica Wilson described it as a “kiss of death.” At a press conference on Friday afternoon in Miami’s Little Haiti, lawyers, activists and officials demanded the restoration of the protections and humanitarian immigration reform.
“This decision not only disregards the ongoing challenges Haiti continues to face from natural disasters to political instability and economic instability. But it also undermines the values of compassion and fairness that this country stands for,” said Marleine Bastien, a Haitian-born Miami-Dade County Commissioner and immigrant-rights advocate. Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine-Cava said in a statement that Trump’s decision “put thousands of families at risk.”
Tasha L., a 25-year-old TPS beneficiary from Haiti who declined to share her last name, arrived in South Florida on a student visa in 2019 from Port-Au-Prince. She studied International Business at Florida International University, determined to carve out a path for herself in a new country. When Biden expanded TPS for Haiti, she felt as if doors to the life she had dreamed for herself were opening. She felt that her success here would make the difficult decision of having left her home country and family behind worth it.
While her family still remains in Haiti, Tasha has been providing them with financial support. If Haiti’s TPS ends, she’s considering moving to a Latin American country because she loves the Spanish language. She also speaks Creole, English and French.
“It is heartbreaking, it means for me to go back to a country with a lot of violence, a country where my family has been a victim of home robberies and were forced to to leave their homes,” she said. “I am working and I contribute to this economy. And this will mean for me to stop the life that I started here and my contribution to this country.”
Senator Shevrin D. “Shev” Jones speaks flanked by local and state elected officials, during a press conference called by the Family Action Network Movement to discuss the roll back of Haiti TPS by President Trump administration affecting thousand of Haitian Families, on Friday, February 21, 2025. (Miami Herald photo by: Pedro Portal)
Turmoil continues in Haiti
The Obama administration granted TPS to Haiti in 2010, after a devastating magnitude 7.1 earthquake destroyed the Haitian capital. The natural disaster claimed over 300,000 lives, according to Haitian government figures. President Donald Trump moved to end TPS for the Caribbean country during his first tenure in the White House. He was ultimately unsuccessful amid court challenges. The Biden administration then designated Haiti for TPS in 2021 and then again last year.
In recent years, the country has experienced natural disasters, a presidential assassination and political turbulence. Gangs control large portions of Port-Au-Prince, and they have attacked the national airport and major port terminals. Over 5,600 died in 2024 as a result of gang activity, which has also displaced hundreds of thousands across the country.
“Remember, we are all immigrants from many different countries. Let’s set aside racism. Don’t buy into the divisive rhetoric,” Haitian-born Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, said at the press conference on Friday. “Look at the images coming from Haiti — look at the death, look at the bloodshed. Half of the population is facing food deprivation. There is famine in that country.”
Shevrin Jones, a state senator with roots in the Bahamas, warned that the termination of the protections would have devastating humanitarian consequences. He called on Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who grew up in Miami, to act.
“How cruel can we be, America? How callous can we be about the lives of individuals who have contributed to this community?” Jones said. “I have one request [for Rubio]…to sit down with these people in this community that you call home. This is not a political issue. This has nothing to do with Democrats and Republicans. This has everything to do with humanity.”
Ongoing litigation
On the same day that the Trump administration rolled back Haiti’s TPS extension, Venezuelan beneficiaries of the federal program filed a lawsuit in federal court against the cancellation of the deportation benefits for the South American country. The lawsuit claims that the revocation is unlawful, politically motivated, racially biased, and part of a broader pattern of discrimination against non-European and non-white immigrants.
Ira Kurzban, a prominent Miami immigration attorney who sued Trump when he tried to end Haiti’s TPS the first time, said he intends to sue the federal government over the decision to roll back Haiti’s TPS extension. He said at the press conference that the president is targeting people who are legally in the country and taking away their status as part of his mass deportation efforts.
“He’s taking it away so he can fulfill his promise that he’s getting rid of a million people in the United States. And we are not going to put up with it,” Kurzban said.
‘They could kill us’
Junior, a Haitian man living in South Florida who declined to share his last name because of safety concerns for his family, sent his wife and two children to the U.S. in 2021, three days before President Jovenel Moise was murdered above the hills of Port-au-Prince. He followed five months later amid the deteriorating conditions in the capital, he told the Herald. In Haiti, he used to teach mathematics in a state university. In the United States, he has been able to continue his profession as an educator teaching middle schoolers.
“The United States is the only country that gives opportunities to immigrants. It’s an honor for me to teach here,” he said. “I have started to build my life here.”
Criminal gangs took over the family’s house in Haiti and are currently living in it. They even changed the paint color of his house.
“Imagine if I go back to Haiti, and they know my family and I are in Haiti,” Junior said. “They could kill us to take the house forever.”
By SYRA ORTIZ BLANE/El Nuevo Herald
Syra Ortiz Blanes covers immigration for the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald. Previously, she was the Puerto Rico and Spanish Caribbean reporter for the Heralds through Report for America.
