The United States will end in July 2019 a special status given to about 59,000 Haitian immigrants that protects them from deportation, senior Trump administration officials said on Monday.
"It was assessed overall that the extraordinary but temporary conditions that served as the basis of Haiti’s most recent designation has sufficiently improved such that they no longer prevent nationals of Haiti from returning safely," a senior Trump administration official told a briefing.
The Trump administration has been reviewing temporary protected status, or TPS, for more than 300,000 people. Earlier this month, the administration announced that it would end protected status for the 5,300 Nicaraguans.
The United States originally granted protected status for nearly 60,000 Haitians after a devastating earthquake hit, killing hundreds of thousands and destroying infrastructure.
As Hannah Reynolds put it earlier this year:
As their island home is subjected to uncertainties of its own, a policy of forced repatriation of Haitians is cruel at best. The U.S. harms only itself when it rejects the chance to grow the workforce and ejects those living within our borders who have nowhere else to go.
WATCH below: TPS Explained
Reuters reporting contributed to this story.
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