A 35-year-old nurse in Kentucky prepared her will. The single mother named a legal guardian for her four children and transferred her properties into their names.
She felt like she needed to prepare for death — in case she gets deported back to Haiti, a country she fled at 9 years old.
After the Supreme Court decided Thursday to allow the Trump administration to end legal protections for migrants fleeing violence and natural disasters in Haiti and Syria, fear ricocheted through those communities across the United States. Hundreds of thousands of people now face the prospect of deportation.
“I have been living with this internal fear, it’s like preparing for a funeral, just in case I die when going to another country,” said the nurse, who asked not to be identified for fear of being targeted for deportation.
She is among about 350,000 Haitians granted Temporary Protected Status, many of whom have legally lived and worked in the U.S. for decades and have children who are U.S. citizens. Thursday’s decision, which is expected to take effect July 27, also applied to around 6,000 Syrians. It could also open the door to the administration unwinding protections for 1.3 million people from 17 countries.
Congress created Temporary Protected Status in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries deemed dangerous, because of disasters, civil war or other violence or instability. It permits people to work legally in the U.S. but does not provide a path to citizenship. It can be renewed in increments of up to 18 months if the homeland security secretary deems conditions unsafe for return.
The Biden administration roughly doubled the number of people covered by TPS. The Trump administration ended those protections, insisting it was meant to be temporary, the countries are now safe and that President Joe Biden’s administration expanded the destination and poorly vetted its recipients.
TPS beneficiaries have, by definition, been living in limbo and their futures have been especially precarious under President Donald Trump, but the Supreme Court ruling delivered what could be a crushing blow to living and working legally in the United States.
The Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, became a particular target of the administration during the 2024 campaign, when Trump said Haitians there were eating people’s cats and dogs.
The community has been under intense pressure ever since, said Viles Dorsainvil, the executive director of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center in Springfield.