U.S. pastors pray their Haitian congregants can stay

Keny Felix had been in the Dominican Republic for maybe an hour on a mission trip when he saw the news on his phone: The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that federal judges could not stop President Donald Trump’s administration from revoking the temporary protected status of more than a dozen countries. The legal designation known as temporary protected status, or TPS, allows foreign nationals to stay in the United States without fear of immediate deportation.

Felix, who was born in Guadeloupe to Haitian parents, preaches at Bethel Evangelical Baptist Church in Miami Gardens, Fla., which his father pastored from 1980 to 2015. Felix also serves as president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s National Haitian Fellowship. Much of his congregation is Haitian. And roughly 10-15% of those congregants are in the United States on TPS, he estimated.

“I was driving to our mission site, which is about an hour-and-45-minute drive from Santo Domingo,” Felix said. “I had to pull over because [of] just the magnitude of this decision. And then simultaneously my phone started buzzing, you know, with different calls.”

Since that June 25 ruling, Felix and other Haitian pastors across the United States have found themselves considering how to lead congregants who face impending job losses and the possibility of returning home to a country plagued by gang violence and economic instability. As they do their best to encourage their congregations and knit their community together, pastors like Felix are also praying for Trump administration officials to change their minds.

“For us, the decision by the Supreme Court was definitely devastating because what it means is that over 300,000 individuals, families, adults, and children who were seeking refuge in the United States will now be at risk of being returned home to a country that has been filled with significant violence, instability, [and] food insecurity,” Felix said. “Over 1 million people in Haiti are presently displaced because of the rampant gun violence.”

TPS designations temporarily grant foreign nationals the ability to stay in the United States while their home country experiences certain conditions—like armed conflict, natural disaster, or other extraordinary circumstances—that prevent them from returning safely. The United States has had a TPS designation in place for Haiti since 2010, when a major earthquake devastated the Caribbean nation.

The U.S. State Department currently warns Americans not to travel to any part of Haiti due to organized crime, terrorism, risk of kidnapping, and limited healthcare services. In July 2023, the United States removed all nonemergency U.S. government personnel from the country for safety reasons. U.S. commercial airplanes are not currently allowed to fly into Port-au-Prince, and the Federal Aviation Administration prohibits U.S. civil aviation operations from flying under 10,000 feet in much of Haiti because foreign terrorist organizations on the ground have a track record of attacking planes.

Despite these circumstances, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security twice sought to terminate the TPS designation for Haiti last year—once in July and again in November. Federal courts ultimately blocked those efforts, with an appeals court siding with Haitians who challenged the termination order and teeing up the subsequent Supreme Court review. The high court ultimately ruled that federal courts could not block DHS from terminating any TPS designations.

Following the order, Haiti’s TPS status was initially set to expire on July 10. But the Trump administration last week announced it would push back the expiration deadline by two weeks. Haiti’s temporary protected status is currently set to expire on July 24, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

In its Federal Register notices, DHS implied that the country’s lack of clear government structure and rampant violence were proof that the United States shouldn’t be harboring individuals from Haiti. Haitian gang members have been arrested in the United States for committing serious offenses, DHS noted. The Biden administration’s failure to properly vet immigrants has led to a growing threat to the United States, the department added.

Felix, though, argues Haitian TPS holders are, by and large, not dangerous individuals but good people trying to contribute to their communities. In order to be considered a TPS holder, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services requires individuals to prove their nationality and pass a background check.

“When we speak of those who are on TPS, we’re talking about folks who are here legally because they’ve gone through the process to obtain that legal status,” Felix said.

Haitians in the United States on TPS are also working and paying taxes. Haitian TPS holders contribute $5.9 billion annually to the U.S. economy and pay about $1.6 billion in taxes, according to numbers from FWD.us, an organization that lobbies on behalf of immigrants in Washington, D.C.

“Sometimes we think of immigrants who are seeking refuge as being state-dependent,” Felix said. “No, these are people who are just asking, hey, give us a chance to work.”

Felix said members of his congregation who were living in the United States on TPS at the time of the U.S. Supreme Court decision were working jobs. But later this month their employment authorization paperwork is set to expire. Felix and other pastors of Haitian congregations across the United States expect their churches will need to help financially support members of their congregations who will soon be unable to work legally.

“The church is going to have to step in and assess and continue to do more to assist these families with basic needs,” Felix said, “including addressing the mental health needs that arise when people are living under such stress and uncertainty due to the present circumstances.”

Watson Escarment, the chief operating officer at Good Samaritan Haitian Alliance Church near Atlanta, Ga., echoed those concerns.

“We anticipate that we will have to kind of switch ourselves to meet the needs that will surface: housing, food, transportation,” Escarment said. Good Samaritan leaders talking with other Haitian community leaders about how to meet those needs.

Mardochee Pardieu, a pastor at Good Samaritan, was born in Haiti and spent much of his early childhood there before coming to the United States. He estimated about half the people in his congregation are Haitians on TPS. He fears the consequences they face if they are forced to return to Haiti. “It would be another disaster,” Pardieu said.

Escarment left Haiti at the age of 10 to come to the United States. He never wanted to go back, but after the island’s 2010 earthquake, Escarment used his engineering and organizational leadership experience to help with recovery efforts. Between 2010 and 2021, Escarment made more than 50 trips to Haiti to help communities recover from the earthquake and to assist with mission-related work, he said. But following the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse near Port-au-Prince, he hasn’t visited the country due to the continuing violence. Just last week, Escarment said, a pastor of a Haiti church connected with Good Samaritan had to flee his neighborhood because gang members set fire to his house and car.

“It’s everything and worse than we can even imagine,” he said. “It’s worse than the news can tell us.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has sought to end TPS for several countries in addition to Haiti, such as Afghanistan, Syria, Burma, Cameroon, and others. But of the estimated 1.3 million people in the United States on TPS, roughly 350,000—or a quarter of all TPS holders—are from Haiti, according to DHS’ estimates.

When WORLD asked DHS for comment about whether Haiti was safe for TPS holders to return to, the agency responded by sharing a statement from June 2025. It explained how former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to terminate Haiti’s temporary protected status was informed by the belief that the situation in Haiti had improved and that it was safe for Haitians to return.

“Temporary protected status is supposed to be temporary,” said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge and a resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies. But under recent presidential administrations, that temporary status has become quasi-permanent, Arthur said. And while Haiti does suffer from intense crime and violence, the country isn’t going to get better if the United States continues to retain individuals who could help rebuild civil society in Haiti, he added.

“When you extend indefinite TPS to any given country, you are hollowing out the civil society in that country,” Arthur said. “When you take … the doctors and the teachers and the engineers from a country and basically keep them in your country forever, to a degree that benefits your country, but it does nothing to help the country of nationality of those individuals.”

And although the State Department does advise U.S. citizens not to travel to certain dangerous parts of the world, that doesn’t mean the United States needs to continue housing those individuals inside its borders indefinitely, Arthur said.

“The State Department puts up warnings with respect to any number of Mexican states. That doesn’t mean all of those people should leave Mexico and move to the United States where they’ll be safer,” Arthur argued.

In its June 2025 statement, DHS encouraged Haitians in the United States to pursue legal status through other means. Following the Supreme Court decision, current Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin again affirmed that Haitians in the United States on TPS could pursue legal status through other means, although he said he couldn’t guarantee all would succeed in gaining such status.

Pardieu and Escarment are urging members of their congregation to apply for asylum, which requires filling out a Form 1-589, passing a background check, getting fingerprinted, and sitting for an asylum interview. After that process, an asylum officer decides whether the individual will receive asylum. Applying for asylum might not allow Haitians to stay in the United States permanently, but it could allow them to stay longer than they otherwise would, Escarment said.

“It’s very tedious, and the likelihood of winning an asylum case is really very minimal,” Escarment admitted.

Good Samaritan Haitian Alliance Church has been helping its congregants with finding legal assistance. But its leaders have also seen fewer people showing up to church, because of fear that ICE agents could be waiting for them there, Escarment said.

Beyond the legal battles, Escarment and Pardieu explained that they’re also praying that God will change the hearts and minds of Americans—and American leaders—toward the situation of Haitians in the United States on TPS.

“Our president right now, with this ruling, has the choice to be the humanitarian in chief or to go in the opposite direction and put more than 1.3 million people’s lives at risk if they are returned to countries that are filled with violence and instability and conditions that threaten human life,” Bethel pastor Keny Felix added.

Pardieu explained that he prays God will give Haitians in the United States a pathway to permanent status. He noted that a bill in Congress—already passed by the House and still awaiting approval from the Senate—would require DHS to restore Haiti’s TPS designation.

Meanwhile, Escarment said he hopes Americans will change their perspectives about the Haitians the government is trying to remove.

“I’m praying for a mass awakening in people’s heart and minds,” Escarment said. “Not just the leaders, but people living day-to-day, because these people are our neighbors. They are friends. They are co-workers, they are schoolmates.”

—This story was corrected July 16 to reflect that Keny Felix was born in Guadeloupe.