US Deportation Flights Return Haitians to a City It Warns Its Own Citizens Not to Enter

US Deportation Flights Return Haitians to a City It Warns Its Own Citizens Not to Enter

OPINION BY: Staff Writer September 2026

Human Rights Watch finds 474 people removed to Cap-Haïtien since TPS ended, received in a shipping container with no running water and $77 in cash

Since the United States terminated Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian nationals in late July 2026, US immigration authorities have deported hundreds of people back to a country the US State Department itself rates at Level 4 — “Do Not Travel” — its highest advisory category, according to a report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The rights organization, which sent researchers to Cap-Haïtien from August 24 to 30 to interview arriving deportees and Haitian officials, found that more than 450 people had been removed to Haiti since July, according to figures from Haiti’s National Office for Migration. Between August 20 and September 17 alone, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operated five consecutive weekly flights to Cap-Haïtien carrying a total of 474 people — a sharp escalation from the roughly one flight per month the US had operated before TPS ended. 

TPS is a US legal mechanism that shields nationals of designated countries from deportation when conditions there are judged too dangerous for safe return. Haiti was first designated in 2010, after the earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people, and the designation was repeatedly renewed as the country’s security and humanitarian crises deepened. The Trump administration moved to terminate the designation in 2025; after more than a year of litigation, the US Supreme Court allowed the termination to proceed on June 25, 2026. TPS for an estimated 330,000 Haitians lapsed on July 27.

A RECEPTION BUILT FROM SHIPPING CONTAINERS

HRW researchers were present at Cap-Haïtien International Airport on August 27 for the arrival of a deportation flight and documented the reception process directly. Deportees were processed in a structure converted from shipping containers, with seating for approximately 60 people and two toilets outside — only one of which was functional, and neither connected to running water.

Shortly before the August 27 US flight landed, a separate flight carrying 105 Haitians deported from the Bahamas arrived, exceeding the container’s capacity; officials erected a tent in an adjacent yard to accommodate the overflow. Neither space, HRW noted, offered privacy for individualized assessment of medical needs, protection risks, or other vulnerabilities among arriving deportees.

Officials from Haiti’s National Office for Migration told researchers they typically received about two days’ notice ahead of deportation flights, and that the manifests supplied by US authorities listed only names, dates of birth, gender, nationality and immigration A-numbers — with no information on the grounds for removal, medical or protection needs, or family contacts. In both flights HRW examined, the number of arrivals exceeded what the manifests had indicated: 161 people arrived on August 20, and 57 on August 27.

After registration, deportees received a meal, a drink, and approximately 10,000 Haitian gourdes — about US$77 — in cash assistance, before being transferred to Haiti’s Departmental Judicial Police Service for further processing. Beyond that point, HRW found, deportees are left to arrange their own onward travel and shelter. Haitian officials interviewed across nine government institutions — covering migration, health, child protection, education, labour, identification and justice — told researchers the government has no coordinated plan for deportees’ longer-term reintegration, no dedicated shelter, and no expedited process for issuing identity documents, which can otherwise take one to three months to obtain.

CONDITIONS IN HAITI

The US government’s justification for ending TPS was that conditions in Haiti had “improved sufficiently” to no longer meet the statutory threshold. HRW’s report places that determination against United Nations figures showing at least 19,380 people killed in gang, “self-defense group,” and security-force violence between January 2023 and June 2026 — with the annual death toll rising roughly 24 percent between 2023 and 2025, from 4,789 to at least 5,915, and at least 3,050 more killed in the first six months of 2026 alone.

Nearly 1.5 million people are internally displaced, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and more than half of Haiti’s population requires humanitarian assistance amid crisis-level food insecurity. A UN-authorized Gang Suppression Force began partial deployment in April 2026 but has not reversed the trend, according to HRW, with criminal groups that once operated mainly in Port-au-Prince expanding into at least five of Haiti’s ten departments.

Flights now land in Cap-Haïtien rather than the capital because the US Federal Aviation Administration prohibits American commercial and US-registered aircraft from flying below 10,000 feet over Port-au-Prince, citing the danger posed by criminal groups controlling the area around the capital’s airport; the FAA extended that restriction in early September through March 2, 2027. Cap-Haïtien’s own population has more than tripled in two years to over one million, according to the city’s mayor, driven by displacement and returns from other countries, principally the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos — placing further strain on electricity, water and health infrastructure that officials describe as already inadequate.

DUE PROCESS CONCERNS

Nearly all of those HRW interviewed said they held TPS and had separately filed asylum claims, permanent residence applications, or other protection claims; many of which they said remained pending when they were detained. Most said ICE detained them before TPS formally lapsed on July 27, often without explanation, during routine check-ins, at home, or following traffic stops. Interviewees described being denied access to lawyers and, in most cases, not appearing before an immigration judge before removal.

HRW cross-checked available records through the Executive Office for Immigration Review and found some interviewees had, in fact, been issued removal orders prior to their deportation — orders they said ICE never showed them and which they said they learned of only when detained. Because deportees lack access to their own immigration files, HRW said it could not independently verify the complete history of each case.

Interviewees described custody conditions at facilities including the Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami and the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, as well as detention centers in Ohio, New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, citing overcrowding, inadequate food, limited access to medical care, and difficulty contacting relatives or counsel — findings HRW said were consistent with its own prior documentation of conditions at some of the same facilities in July 2025.

On August 24, the US Department of Homeland Security stated on X that 15 of the 161 people deported on the August 20 flight had criminal convictions. None of the individuals HRW interviewed were among those identified.

INTERNATIONAL LEGAL STANDARD

In August, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called on the United States to ensure international protection where substantial grounds exist to believe a person’s return to Haiti would expose them to serious risk to life or physical safety, and stressed that deportation decisions must be individually assessed with access to due process and an effective remedy — a standard HRW’s report finds is not being met in the current pace and structure of removals.

HRW is calling on the US Senate to pass House-approved legislation that would extend TPS for Haitians through 2029, and on the US government to immediately halt deportations to Haiti in accordance with the principle of nonrefoulement — the prohibition on returning people to places where their life or safety would be at risk.

Sources draws on Human Rights Watch’s field investigation in Cap-Haïtien (August 24–30, 2026), interviews with 44 deportees, and review of flight manifests, government and UN data. — The 592 Guardian