Donald Trump wants to revoke Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. What would this mean for Pennsylvania?

Haitian immigrant communities in Pennsylvania and Ohio have become something of a talking point for former President Donald Trump, and this month, he said he wants to revoke the legal protection that allows many of those immigrants to live and work in the United States without being deported.

“You have to remove the people, we cannot destroy our country,” Trump said about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, in an Oct. 2 interview with NewsNation. ”... You have to remove the people and you have to bring them back to their own country.”

“So you would revoke the Temporary Protected Status?” the reporter asked him.

“Absolutely, I’d revoke it and I’d bring them back to their country,” he said.

Trump has spread falsehoods about Haitian immigrants in Springfield to depict them as a damaging force in the community, and he has done the same with Haitian immigrants in the small borough of Charleroi, Pa., where, as in Springfield, Haitians are known to be legally living and working with Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Officials in both Springfield and Charleroi have described Haitian immigrants as beneficial additions to their communities that needed workers to fill jobs.

So what is TPS anyway?

» READ MORE: Immigrants were revitalizing tiny Charleroi. Then Donald Trump’s attacks brought white supremacists and conservative influencers.

TPS is a federal humanitarian program that allows people from other countries to stay in the United States instead of having to return home to an ongoing armed conflict, a natural disaster, or an epidemic. TPS applicants can also apply for work permits. The program was created by Congress in 1990 and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican. While the status is technically temporary, some TPS recipients have lived in the United States for two decades, according to Pew Research Center.

The secretary of homeland security keeps a list of countries eligible for TPS that would be unsafe for its residents to return to, or, in specific circumstances, when the country cannot handle their return. TPS country designations are granted for up to 18 months but can be continually renewed, depending on the conditions of the foreign country. TPS applicants must prove that they have been in the United States since the country last received the designation, and recipients must reregister each time the status is extended.

Despite Trump’s fearmongering about these immigrants, those who have been convicted of a felony, or two or more misdemeanors in the U.S., are not eligible for TPS.

Since TPS recipients must already have been in the United States, they include a mix of people who arrived in the United States legally and illegally.

For example, there are Haitians in both Springfield and Charleroi who were able to legally come to the U.S. through a temporary humanitarian parole program that President Joe Biden announced in January 2023, which allowed Haitians with a U.S. sponsor to be vetted to work for two years.

In another example, Cathryn Miller-Wilson, the executive director of HIAS Pennsylvania, said that it’s common for students who came to the U.S. on a visa to apply for TPS if something extreme happens in their home country while they are in the States, such as the latest earthquake or presidential assassination in Haiti.

In 2018, there were 3,162 TPS recipients in Pennsylvania, including 1,053 from Haiti, according to the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy group. That number would be noticeably higher now, said Joseph Murphy, an immigration attorney based in Pittsburgh. Additionally, he said he was aware of a request for 700 TPS applications in Charleroi in 2023, after Biden announced the temporary humanitarian parole program.

It is not clear how many people in Pennsylvania currently have TPS. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for information.

Miller-Wilson said HIAS Pennsylvania has helped “a large number” of Haitians obtain TPS directly and by way of recruiting, training, and mentoring pro bono attorneys. The organization also explains TPS in Creole on its website and has given presentations to Haitian communities, which she said are “all over” the state, including in Philadelphia.

It would be a disaster, in Miller-Wilson’s eyes.

Many Haitians have been in the United States for years with unending disasters in their home country keeping the country on the TPS list. So ending their TPS status would mean closing their businesses, selling their homes, leaving jobs open that employers rely on them to fill, and separating from their American citizen children, Miller-Wilson said.

Instead of leaving that all behind, they would more likely “stay and live in the shadows” while losing their jobs and work authorization, becoming vulnerable and dependent while ineligible for public benefits, she added.

“It makes no sense,” Miller-Wilson said of ending TPS for Haitians. “Right now they’re contributors. They’re full community members that we rely on for hundreds of things, from health care to restaurants to business ownership, so you take that away and everything collapses.”

Murphy said he would put out ads for asylum application services if Trump didn’t keep TPS going for Haitians, and see if locals would be able to qualify. But putting Haitians’ TPS status at risk could be detrimental to supply chains at a local frozen-foods plant that employs hundreds of immigrants, and on a larger scale, it could shake up the country’s immigration system, he said.

He said that while getting rid of TPS could score political points for Trump, it would be a reckless move, calling TPS a “relief valve” for immigration crossings at the border.

“They would just crash their own asylum system,” Murphy said.

Trump attempted to end the TPS program for people from various countries when he was president, warning thousands of immigrants with TPS, including Haitians, that they would have to leave the country or be deported. But Trump’s effort got sidetracked by challenges in court before Biden’s inauguration, and the Biden administration has since extended the TPS protections for Haitians.

A president has the authority to remove countries from the TPS list, but plaintiffs argued that Trump’s administration had not followed the proper procedures for doing so by not assessing whether conditions in the countries still warranted protection, the New York Times reported. The plaintiffs argued that the Trump’s administration’s decisions were instead based on racial hostility.

TPS is a temporary benefit that does not include a path to citizenship. People with the status cannot just apply for a green card (the step before applying for citizenship). That said, TPS recipients can still apply for other legal statuses that they may be eligible for, such as asylum, or a green card through marriage. But escaping a widespread disaster does not make someone eligible for asylum — asylum claims are more specifically for individuals who have faced persecution or have reason to fear persecution in their home country.

And whether someone had entered the country legally or illegally could complicate getting a green card through marriage, Murphy said. For certain immigrants, a business sponsorship could be an option, Miller-Wilson said.

But Miller-Wilson said it’s “frustratingly rare” for people on TPS to have a pathway to citizenship despite living in the country for years.

“It’s a terrible system, because these are people that are paying taxes, that are working, that are purchasing, that are marrying, that are raising children, that are participating in the PTA, and yet they can never be full American citizens,” she said. “It’s bad for them, but it’s worse for us. Why would you want people that are ‘temporary,’ that aren’t able to fully engage, that are disenfranchised, that can’t fully participate?”

On his first day in office, Biden asked Congress to pass a bill that would provide a path to citizenship for certain TPS holders, but the effort didn’t make much progress in Congress.

The list currently includes 16 countries, including Haiti and Venezuela. The Homeland Security Department expanded TPS status for Haitians in June due to “simultaneous economic, security, political, and health crises.”

In 2010, President Barack Obama granted the status to Haitians following a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that year, the New York Times reported. The current status is set to expire on Feb. 3, 2026, but could be renewed.

Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone previously had TPS statuses that have since ended due to the dangerous spread of Ebola winding down.