DHS video shows shackled Haitians boarding deportation flight, days after TPS ends

The Department of Homeland Security posted a video on August 28 showing Black men in shackles being led up the stairs of a deportation flight to Haiti, days after ending Temporary Protected Status for more than 300,000 Haitians living in the United States.

The video shows men with their wrists and ankles bound and linked by a chain around their waist, boarding a charter flight that carried 161 Haitians out of the country. It is set to a Haitian song and closes with on-screen text reading “Temporary Meant Temporary. Leave Now.”

What ended, and when

Haiti’s TPS designation had run for 16 years, first granted after the 2010 earthquake. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the Trump administration’s authority to terminate it, and a federal district judge lifted a stay blocking that termination on August 5, according to the Springfield News-Sun. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Haitians at the time: “Either self-deport or we will arrest you and send you back. It’s that simple.”

The deportation flight and the video that followed came a week after a gang attack in Port-au-Prince on August 23 that killed more than 47 people and involved more than 50 kidnappings, according to Common Dreams.

The reaction

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote that “hundreds of thousands of Haitians were living and working legally, paying taxes, and contributing,” and that “Trump hates Haitians, and the White House wanted videos of Black people in chains, so they stripped them of status and turned on the cameras,” according to Washington Current.

Attorney Bradley P. Moss wrote of the deported Haitians that “these people had protected status. They lived here legally. They worked, they paid taxes. They made lives. Raised families,” calling the reversal “a stain on the soul of this Nation,” per the same report.

Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, who traveled to Washington in July to lobby lawmakers on behalf of Haitian migrants, renewed his appeal after the Port-au-Prince attack. “Haiti is still a house on fire,” he said, according to the National Catholic Reporter, and he called on the administration to “rethink” the deportations of more than 300,000 Haitians whose status had been revoked.

Who is affected

Ohio alone counted roughly 26,000 Haitians who lost protected status, with an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 of them in the single city of Springfield, per the Springfield News-Sun report. Community leaders there said deporting residents back to a country facing gang violence, kidnapping and political instability would put lives at risk, according to the same report. Syrian nationals also lost TPS in the same round of terminations, affecting about 6,000 people, according to Common Dreams.

The video was posted to DHS’s official account on the social media platform X and drew immediate backlash in the comments and from immigration researchers, attorneys and advocacy groups who reposted and criticized it within hours, according to Washington Current’s account of the reaction.

DHS has not said how many additional deportation flights to Haiti are planned or whether further video will accompany them.