Hanging Haitians out to dry

On the cusp of making a fateful decision about whether to let 50,000 Haitians continue to stay in the United States years after an earthquake devastated that impoverished nation, the Trump administration appears to be poisoning the waters. How else to explain an effort by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, revealed Tuesday by the Associated Press, to gather evidence of crimes committed by Haitian immigrants?

At issue is extension of what’s called Temporary Protected Status, which, since the 2010 disaster, has enabled Haitians who were then living in America to remain without fear of deportation.

If the decision is made on the merits, the reprieve will continue. A cholera epidemic in the immediate aftermath of the quake, a devastating hurricane last year and other awful episodes have exacerbated Haiti’s hardship.

Ship people back by the thousands, removing their remittances from the Haitian economy, and the U.S. will compound the agony.

Which is why Sens. Marco Rubio, a Republican, and Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, are urging renewal of the status.

The Trump administration, leaning against, is looking at other factors.

In internal emails from April obtained by the AP, the USCIS’s head of policy asked underlings to gather “any reports of criminal activity by any individual with TPS. Even though it’s only a snapshot and not representative of the entire situation, we need more than ‘Haiti is really poor’ stories.”

Translation: The Department of Homeland Security, pushing back against evidence of real-world despair in Haiti, is prepared to gum up the works by smearing Haitians living here as lawbreakers.

What’s especially offensive about that: Criminals are already barred from obtaining the special status. Every applicant must submit their fingerprints to the feds.

Which means, by definition, Haitians eligible for the status are not criminals.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly will make the final call later this month. He must do so motivated not by cheap fearmongering — but by the overwhelming evidence that a suffering population from a tortured place still needs a lifeline.