The U.S. deported more than 160 people to Haiti on Thursday (August 20, 2026) for the first time since the Trump administration won a legal battle to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for some 350,000 Haitians.
“Our mission is to welcome migrants of forced return. We welcome them with the aim of accompanying them to their home. She said ICE has been a heavy presence in recent days in Springfield, a city of about 60,000 people that gained attention when U.S. President Donald Trump said falsely during his 2024 campaign that Haitian residents there ate dogs.
Because the main international airport in Port-au-Prince is considered too dangerous, the plane landed in the northern Haitian city of Cap-Haitien. Because of ongoing gang violence, the U.S. government currently has a ban on U.S. commercial flights to Haiti’s capital through early September.
The deportees included TPS holders and Haitians who had served prison sentences, said Jean Negot Bonheur Delva, director general of Haiti’s National Office of Migration. “It is not the Haitian state that asks for them to be sent back,” he said. He said the government would attempt to reunify him with any potential relatives in Haiti or the Dominican Republic, where his mother and father live. The pastor, Gilbert Joubert Adrien, was being held by immigration authorities in Ohio, said Marjory Wentworth, a spokesperson for Springfield G92. “Haiti is not ready to receive this number of migrants who were in the TPS programme,” it said in a statement. “We note that there are no government measures in place to adequately assist these migrants,” the group said.
