The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday announced the end of temporary immigration protections for Haitians, adding them to a growing list of immigrant groups seeing their protected status revoked by the Trump administration.

The decision, which becomes effective on Feb. 3, 2026, could affect more than a half million Haitians living in the U.S. under what is known as temporary protected status. The designation was granted to Haiti after a string of natural and political disasters, starting with a catastrophic earthquake in 2010 that left the country and economy in ruins.

Barring potential legal delays from lawsuits, Haitians now will face returning to an unstable country facing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises as criminal gangs control all major roads in and out of the capital of Port-au-Prince, and aggressively spread their terror to other regions.

DHS in its Federal Register notice acknowledged that “certain conditions in Haiti remain concerning.” But despite that, and the escalating violence “that has ‘engulfed’ Port-au-Prince‘, Secretary Kristi Noem “has determined that there are no extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti that prevent Haitian nationals (or aliens having no nationality who last habitually resided in Haiti) from returning in safety,” the agency wrote.

“Moreover, even if the Department found that there existed conditions that were extraordinary and temporary that prevented Haitian nationals,” the agency added, “from returning in safety, termination of Temporary Protected Status of Haiti is still required because it is contrary to the national interest of the United States to permit Haitian nationals ... to remain temporarily in the United States.”

As of 11:59 p.m. February 3, 2026, all Haitian nationals who have been granted TPS will lose the status and must leave.

“After consulting with interagency partners, Secretary Noem concluded that Haiti no longer meets the statutory requirements for TPS,” the agency wrote in its announcement.

“This decision was based on a review conducted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, input from relevant U.S. government agencies, and an analysis indicating that allowing Haitian nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is inconsistent with U.S. national interests.”

The numbers paint a terrible picture in Haiti. A record 5.7 million people — 51% of the total population — are currently experiencing acute levels of hunger, with children increasingly at risk for malnutrition, the World Food Program recently warned. Meanwhile, as many as 1 in 4 Haitians, 2.7 million people, are forced to live in gang-controlled neighborhoods, more than 1.4 million are internally displaced, according to the United Nations. Rape, kidnapping and gang-related killings, all over 4,000 this year, are daily realities of life.

DHS said that the data indicates parts of the country are suitable to return to. That isn’t entirely true.

Even in communities where armed groups are not yet visibly a problem, the situation is critical. The northern port city of Cap-Haïtien, which until this month offered the only access for international flights amid an ongoing U.S. Federal Aviation Administration ban on U.S. carriers, is bursting at the seams. The southern regions are also struggling to recover from Hurricane Melissa.

The storm’s recent passage unleashed widespread disruption and compounded existing problems with food and transportation, even though the country dodged a direct hit. At least 43 deaths were reported, mostly in the south, which is today completely cut off from the north and capital by road due to the presence of gangs that on Sunday once more forced the suspension of flights after firing on a domestic airline as it landed at the Port-au-Prince airport.

“Many households rely on unsafe water sources and lack access to basic sanitation, increasing the risk of disease outbreaks,” the U.N. said about the situation in southern Haiti. “Health facilities are under-equipped, financially inaccessible for many, and unable to provide mental health support. As a result, preventable illnesses and malnutrition are on the rise, particularly among children and pregnant women. Vulnerable groups — including women, girls, and youth — face heightened protection risks, including exploitation and violence.”

Though DHS previously announced the end of Haiti’s designation as of Feb. 3, the law requires the secretary to review country conditions at least 60 days before the expiration of TPS to determine whether the country continues to meet the conditions for designation.

“Based on the Department’s review, the Secretary has determined that while the current situation in Haiti is concerning, the United States must prioritize its national interests and permitting Haitian nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to the U.S. national interest,” the notice said.

The administration’s decision isn’t surprising. Since taking office, President Donald Trump has moved to roll back immigration protections for Haitians and others, and ended TPS protections for millions of migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Syria, Nepal, Cameroon, Afghanistan, Burma, Somalia and Myanmar.

The agency’s order, issued a day before the Thanksgiving holiday, was blunt: “If you are an alien who is currently a beneficiary of TPS for Haiti, you should prepare to depart if you have no other lawful basis for remaining in the United States.”

But advocates for Haitians in the U.S. called the move poorly timed and cruel.

“If Haiti doesn’t warrant TPS, which country does?” said Guerline Jozef, co-founder of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, a San Diego immigrant rights group. “For this news to come on the eve of Thanksgiving is devastating.”

Jozef pointed out that Washington has acknowledged both in recent communiqués and actions the crisis plaguing Haiti, which has been mired by repeated crises since its first designation. Among them: a deadly Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and a 7.2 earthquake in 2021, five weeks after its president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in the middle of the night.

In justifying its decision, DHS quoted U.N. Secretary General António Guterres’s comments in August that “there are emerging signals of hope.” But in that same meeting, he also warned that they were in “a perfect storm” of suffering as state authority crumbled across Haiti and lawlessness and gang brutality paralyzed daily life.

In May, the Trump administration designated a powerful coalition of gangs, Viv Ansanm, and another group, Gran Grif, as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. In September, the U.S.’s new ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz, led an aggressive push at the U.N. Security Council for support for a new Gang Suppression Force to help in the fight against terrorist gangs. Despite DHS’ highlight of these decisions, little has improved in Haiti since the steps were taken. In fact, the situation has worsened.

The deployment of the first contingent of the GSF is still uncertain even as the U.S. pushes for general elections, which last took place in 2016, and last week gangs escalated their attacks. The latter led the State Department on Monday to revoke the visa of a member of the ruling presidential council, Fritz Alphonse Jean. Jean has vehemently denied the accusations, and in a scathing press conference on Tuesday accused the U.S. of threatening him and others because they want to fire the prime minister over “incompetence.”

In another recent example reflecting conditions in Haiti: Over the weekend, a group of members of Congress, mostly Republicans, visited the Dominican Republic after canceling plans to travel to Port-au-Prince amid safety and logistics concerns.

“It makes absolutely no sense for the U.S. to terminate TPS for Haiti at this critical time, where the admiration has acknowledged the ongoing political crisis in Haiti to the point of having a Level 4 ‘Do not travel’ warning to the country,” Jozef said. “They must protect the Haitian who have called the U.S. home for over a decade, those who are already here, who have families, who have businesses in their adoptive communities.”

It’s not the first time the administration has tried to revoke TPS for Haitians. Soon after taking office this year, Trump attempted to roll back an extension given under the Biden administration. The decision was overridden by a New York federal judge, who said Noem had no authority to shorten the designation. The decision was part of a lawsuit spearheaded by a group of lawyers that, included Miami immigration attorney Ira Kurzban.

The suit was amended earlier this year to prevent the administration from ending the designation. Kurzban, who also successfully sued DHS during the first Trump administration after it sought to revoke TPS for Haitians, said the administration’s rationale for ending TPS is based on “outright lies.”

“Haiti is in political and economic turmoil due in large measure to U.S. foreign policy, including by the current administration. The reasons offered to terminate TPS are frivolous and include mischaracterizations and outright lies,” he said.

“They are a product of Trump, (Vice President JD) Vance and Sec. Noem’s actions that demonstrate hatred of Haitians and racism toward Black refugees.”

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