Haitian pregnant woman in Florida fears deportation as TPS ends
A 29-year-old expectant mother is in hiding, concerned that she will be deported at any moment after the Trump administration ended the Temporary Protected Status program for hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants.
She is among the more than 300,000 Haitian nationals who held Temporary Protective Status until the Trump administration ended the decades-long program earlier this week after a prolonged legal fight , citing improved conditions in Haiti.
Just ahead of the expiration of TPS, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement made plans to ramp up operations to arrest and deport Haitian migrants, according to two ICE sources and federal documents obtained by CBS News last week.
"I was 6 years old when I first came here," said the woman, whom CBS News is not naming. She also said that she has no family left in Haiti.
The program was designed for Haitians who came to the U.S. to escape violence in their homeland.
The TPS program for Haitians has been shuttered despite the State Department having issued a Level 4 travel advisory warning Americans not to travel to the Caribbean nation. A new United Nations report found that there were 613 gang-related killings in Haiti between March and July, and a suspension of basic services in neighborhoods impacted by the violence.