Immigration protections for Haitians in USA will end in 2019

The Trump administration announced Monday that it will end immigration protections in May 2019 for about 59,000 Haitians in the USA, concluding that conditions in the poverty-stricken Caribbean country have improved enough since a massive earthquake in 2010 for residents to return.

The Obama administration granted “temporary protected status” to Haitians after the nation was ravaged by a magnitude-7.0 earthquake in 2010 that killed more than 200,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands. The protections have allowed Haitians to legally remain in the USA and have been extended each year as Haiti struggles to recover.

Elaine Duke, acting director of the Department of Homeland Security, made the decision that extraordinary temporary conditions on which the special protections were issued “no longer exist.”