The Trump administration plans to step up deportation flights to Haiti as soon as this week, according to documents obtained by The New York Times, a move intended to more quickly expel thousands of Haitians whose legal status expired this summer with the end of a humanitarian program.
The administration aims to increase the pace of flights from once a month to once a week, the documents show, potentially allowing for the deportation of hundreds more people per month. The flights are expected to continue weekly in the near term, though a U.S. official cautioned that the plans were still being finalized.
The push comes after the Supreme Court ruled in June that the administration was free to end Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status, a program that blocks the deportation of people from designated countries deemed too dangerous to return its citizens to. The Trump administration concluded that Haiti is safe enough to be removed from the protected list, despite widespread lawlessness and gang activity in the country.
The State Department has warned U.S. travelers not to visit Haiti “due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest and limited health care.” The Federal Aviation Administration banned commercial airlines from landing in the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, earlier this year, citing “ongoing instability.” There have been reports of gangs firing on aircraft trying to land at the Port-au-Prince airport.
“There is not even a vestige of a state in control,” said Daniel Foote, the Biden administration’s special envoy to Haiti, who resigned in 2021 over the deportations of Haitian migrants. Mr. Foote, who remains in contact with people on the ground in Haiti, said the deportations would likely include many Haitian immigrants who have spent most of their lives in the United States and will now be sent to a dangerous environment.
“Not only has it not gotten better, it hasn’t stabilized,” Mr. Foote said. “It just continues to get worse and worse and worse.”
Mr. Foote questioned how the Trump administration assessed that Haiti was now safe enough for an increase of deportations. In fact, internal emails and documents obtained by The Times indicate that the Homeland Security Department decided to terminate the protections in June 2025 without obtaining input from the State Department, which typically is responsible for assessing the conditions in foreign countries.
Deporting hundreds more to Haiti will hasten deportations, but it will still take time to reach the more than 300,000 Haitians who had been allowed to legally live and work in the United States under the expired protected status. The administration will most likely need to further increase the pace to expel every Haitian now in the country illegally. The administration has offered people in the country illegally a plane ticket and $2,600 in cash to self-deport using an app.
“The federal courts have ordered the Haitian illegals must leave the U.S. and we have generously made free flights available,” said Lauren Bis, a White House spokeswoman, who declined to provide specific details on deportation flights to Haiti.
Seeking safer ways to land aircraft than arriving at Port-au-Prince, U.S. officials have flown migrants about 120 miles away to the city of Cap Haitien, which is where the new flights will land. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been flying Haitians to the much smaller city once a month, according to Savi Arvey, the director of policy for immigration issues at Human Rights First, who oversees a project that tracks the deportation flights.
Last Thursday, ICE said it deported more than 160 Haitians to Cap Haitien. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security, which houses ICE, pointed to more than a dozen Haitians on the flight with criminal records. The last deportation flight before that one was in July, according to Ms. Arvey.
Temporary Protected Status “was never designed to be permanent, yet previous administrations have used it as a de facto amnesty program for decades,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement this week. “Under the strong leadership of President Donald J. Trump, we are putting America first again.”
The agency said it would not confirm future deportation flights for security reasons.
Temporary Protected Status was first offered to Haitians during the Obama administration after a devastating earthquake struck the country. The Biden administration extended the protections because of gang violence and instability in the country. But Mr. Trump has made it clear he wants to purge people from Haiti, which he disparaged as a “shithole” country even as his administration has deemed it safe for deportations.
ICE officials have called Haitian immigrants to check in in recent weeks and placed ankle monitors on them, according to advocates. The technology allows ICE officials to monitor their whereabouts.
Mr. Mullin has been under intensifying pressure by supporters of the Trump administration to ramp up deportations of Haitians. “We are giving them an opportunity to either leave on their own and we’ll help you, or we’ll arrest you and send you back,” Mr. Mullin told News Nation this month.
Top administration officials, including Stephen Miller, have said before that removing Haitians is an appropriate action.
“Well, of course, if you no longer have status in this country, then you’re supposed to be deported,” he told reporters in June.
