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What Trump’s Cruel Policies Against Immigrants Say About Who’s Next

The plight of immigrants under this administration provides a lesson and a warning.

Friends, advocates, and community members hold a vigil in Brooklyn to honor 20-year-old Haitian immigrant Pierre Damas Bel, who died by apparent suicide after facing the termination of Temporary Protected Status protections for Haitians, on September 4, 2026, in New York City.

With the protracted war in Iran, a pending firing squad execution, the most expensive election cycle in US history, the unaffordability of everyday necessities, outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, relentless ICE raids and arbitrary detainments (including of children), attacks against selective press outlets, the continued demand for justice for Epstein victims and survivors, and ongoing threats to civil liberties and civil rights, what’s happening to Haitians in the United States might not register for most Americans. But the plight of Haitians living here offers a lens into how America’s light and credibility as a beacon for human rights and civil liberties is quickly fading, shamefully growing dark at rapid speed.

A vital part of the sweeping Immigration Act of 1990, signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, was Temporary Protected Status (TPS). This congressionally created program provided protection from deportation and extended work permits for immigrants experiencing natural disaster, armed conflict, or other extraordinary and temporary conditions in their home countries. The law did not provide permanent protection, and was specifically meant to be temporary, but with an important caveat allowing for review and extension of status. This mattered because armed conflict itself might not be temporary, as evidenced by the US wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Now, however, instead of protecting foreign nationals who cannot safely return to their home country, the country is vilifying them.

The contrasts between George H.W. Bush’s statement upon signing the Immigration Act and Donald Trump’s public statements cannot be more glaring—and that is shameful for the United States. Bush noted that the act’s objectives included “support for the family as the essential unit of society” because the law sought to balance family reunification and employment pathways. This falls in stark contrast to the utterly false and crass campaign slogan Donald Trump spread about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio: “They’re eating cats and dogs.”

After Trump and the right continued to amplify this untrue rumor about Haitians, the administration moved to revoke their TPS. The Supreme Court was forced to weigh in and decided, in a 6–3 ruling, to allow the revocation to proceed. Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent in the case, Mullin v. Doe, underscores our point. As........

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