Biden administration prevented Haitians’ deportation; they must pass vetting to get protected status

In an X post, Donald Trump Jr. claimed Springfield, Ohio, is being destroyed by "unvetted" immigrants and it’s Vice President Kamala Harris’ fault.

"Less than three months ago," Trump Jr. wrote in a Sept. 9 post, "Kamala Harris and her administration blocked 300k unvetted Haitian migrants from being deported out of our country. Today, those unvetted migrants are sucking up precious resources and destroying Springfield, Ohio. Kamala Harris did this."

Trump Jr.’s claim is among several misleading statements about Springfield, where a recent influx of Haitian immigrants has become campaign fodder for former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as they seek to characterize the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policies as harmful to U.S. interests.

Trump Jr.’s X post included a screenshot of a June 28 NBC News story about the Biden administration’s decision to grant temporary protection for up to 300,000 Haitians already in the United States, effectively preventing their deportation.

But Trump Jr.’s post mischaracterizes how the program, Temporary Protected Status, works. Haitian immigrants in the U.S. through this program are vetted by the U.S. government after submitting fingerprints and photos for background checks. The program also is available for people who are here legally and who don’t have a deportation order, such as people on student or tourist visas or who came in lawfully through humanitarian parole programs.

PolitiFact contacted Trump Jr. through his website and emailed the Trump Organization, in which Trump Jr. serves as executive vice president, for further evidence. We received no reply.

Others reshared Trump Jr.’s post, including Turning Point Action, a group founded by conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. Turning Point Action’s Instagram post sharing a screenshot of Trump Jr.’s statement garnered thousands of likes and was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Threads and Instagram.)

Congress established Temporary Protected Status in 1990. It gives the Homeland Security secretary the power to give people illegally in the U.S., and also people here legally on visas, a temporary refuge because of armed conflict, environmental disaster or other extraordinary conditions in their home countries. People granted the protection will generally not be subject to deportation and are allowed to temporarily lawfully live and work in the U.S. 

Temporary Protected Status is not a pathway for permanent legal residency in the U.S. To stay in the U.S. after protections expire, or to eventually gain citizenship, people have to secure a legal status through other avenues, such as asylum, marriage or employment. 

Haitians were first granted Temporary Protected Status in 2010 after an earthquake in Haiti killed more than 220,000 people and severely damaged infrastructure. Since that first designation, that protection has been extended several times because of other environmental disasters including Hurricane Matthew in 2016, civil unrest, the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and gang violence.

In May 2017, the Trump administration renewed the Temporary Protected Status designation for six months. Trump later terminated the designation, but legal challenges stopped his administration from deporting people who were once protected.

The Biden-Harris administration reinstated Temporary Protected Status for Haitians in 2021, and again redesignated Haiti in June. Redesignation made 300,000 Haitians eligible for protection in addition to 200,000 Haitians already protected under the previous Temporary Protected Status designation.

Trump Jr.’s claim may have given people the impression that 300,000 Haitians were already on a path to be deported. But the Temporary Protected Status program is also available to people who don’t have deportation orders. 

Trump Jr.'s claim that Temporary Protected Status recipients are unvetted is inaccurate. To receive Temporary Protected Status, a person must complete Form I-821, a detailed 13-page questionnaire.

"You'll see that extensive biographical and background-related information needs to be provided, including information about any involvement with criminal systems," said Gemma Solimene, a Fordham University School of Law professor specializing in immigration law.

For some of the questions — about history with human rights violations, terrorism, financial benefit from illicit activity and drug-related offenses — answering untruthfully could result in perjury charges.

People who have certain criminal records, such as convictions for possessing small amounts of cannabis, are initially ineligible for Temporary Protected Status. But they can file an additional application seeking a waiver. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services said on its website that it "may grant a waiver of certain inadmissibility grounds for humanitarian purposes, to assure family unity, or when it is in the public interest." People convicted of certain crimes, such as terrorism and participation in genocide, do not qualify for waivers.

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A different humanitarian parole program allows people lawfully in the U.S. to sponsor people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to travel to the U.S. for up to two years. Both sponsors and beneficiaries are subject to security vetting, fingerprint and other biometric screening.

About  210,000 Haitians have been vetted and approved by the U.S. government under this parole program, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said this month. 

Officials suspended the program for a month because of fraud concerns. It resumed in late August with improved vetting, the government said.

Overall, experts pointed to deportation data that shows that even before the June announcement of the Temporary Protected Status extension, the deportation of Haitians in the U.S. illegally had slowed with the government heeding to calls from the United Nations to cease deportations to Haiti until security conditions "significantly improved to permit a safe and dignified return."

The U.S. government also "does not have the arrest, detention, and removal capacity to formally deport from the U.S. interior 300,000 people of a single nationality over a short period of time," said Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute.

Trump Jr. said, "Less than three months ago, Kamala Harris and her administration blocked 300,000 unvetted Haitian migrants from being deported out of our country."

The Biden-Harris administration in June said that up to 300,000 additional Haitians could be granted Temporary Protected Status, which effectively prevents their deportation. But it is not just people who are here illegally who can apply for Temporary Protected Status, people here legally on visas can also apply, so can people who came in lawfully through humanitarian parole programs.

Trump Jr. is inaccurate that the Haitians granted Temporary Protected Status are "unvetted." People granted the status must pass background checks by the U.S. government. We rate the claim Mostly False.

PolitiFact Staff Writer Maria Ramirez Uribe contributed to this report.