Human Rights Watch warned on Monday that the US has deported more than 450 Haitians since the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians ended in late July, sending them back to a country facing spiraling gang violence and a deepening humanitarian crisis, with little to no support upon arrival.

HRW researchers visited Cap-Haïtien, a city on Haiti’s northern coast whose population has tripled amid a nationwide surge in criminal violence and hunger, from August 24 to 30. While there, HRW interviewed 44 deportees and the Haitian officials involved in receiving them.

The group found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has ramped up deportation flights from roughly once a month to five consecutive weekly flights between August 20 and September 17, removing 474 people. Flights have to be diverted to Cap-Haïtien because the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) bars US aircraft from flying to the Port-au-Prince airport due to gang activity. This restriction was recently extended through March 2027.

Nathalye Cortino, a senior Americas researcher at HRW, called for the US to halt these removals, stating:

“The United States is returning people, some with pending asylum claims, to a country that doesn’t have the capacity to protect them from violence, let alone help them find food and shelter.”

These deportations follow the US Supreme Court’s June 25 ruling in Mullin v. Doe, in which the court held that the Trump administration could terminate TPS for an estimated 330,000 Haitians, a status that the US first granted in 2010 following an earthquake in Haiti. The US has repeatedly extended this protection since.

According to Haiti’s National Office for Migration (Office National de la Migration), many of the deportees has lived in the US for years and were separated from family members who were American citizens. Others claimed they had pending asylum claims. HRW further reported that ICE had denied many deportees access to counsel or to appear before an immigration judge before they were put on deportation flights.

HRW further cites the international law principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits returning people to places where their life or safety would be at risk, and references an August statement from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that urges the US to guarantee protection for Haitians facing serious risk upon returning to Haiti. 

White House “border czar” Tom Homan defended the policy on CNN’s State of the Union on August 30. In his statement, he acknowledged that he was unfamiliar with conditions in Haiti, yet claimed that the administration was “just enforcing the law.”

HRW recommends an immediate halt to deportations, guaranteed due process and access to counsel in future removal proceedings, and Senate passage of House-approved legislation that would extend TPS for Haitians through 2029. The group also called on the Haitian government to establish a coordinated national reception and reintegration plan with international donor support.

The report follows HRW’s earlier article in July, where the organization warned that the termination of TPS would expose hundreds of thousands of Haitians to family separation and would return them to a country the State Department itself rates at “Level 4: Do Not Travel,” the highest travel advisory level. No congressional action on the TPS extension bill has been reported as of Monday.