Human Rights Watch calls on U.S. to suspend Haiti deportations

Cap-Haitien absorbs 474 deportees on five ICE flights since late August

Human Rights Watch on Monday called on the United States to suspend deportations to Haiti, warning that the deportees — some with pending asylum applications — are being returned to a country with widespread criminal violence, hunger and limited capacity to receive them. The group’s documentation, drawn from deportee interviews and flight records, identifies a sharp acceleration in removals since Temporary Protected Status ended in July for about 330,000 Haitians.

“The United States is sending people, some with pending asylum claims, to a country that has no capacity to protect them from violence, much less help them find food and shelter,” Nathalye Cotrino, a senior researcher in Human Rights Watch’s Americas Division, said in the statement.

Between Aug. 20 and Thursday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted five flights carrying 474 people to Cap-Haitien, the northern coastal city whose population has tripled amid rising criminal violence and hunger across Haiti. Before that period, the United States had been operating about one deportation flight to Haiti per month, according to the organization.

Cap-Haitien has become the principal arrival point because the airport in Port-au-Prince is considered unsafe. In early September, the Federal Aviation Administration extended restrictions until March 2, 2027, barring U.S. commercial operators and U.S.-registered civil aircraft from flying below 10,000 feet over the capital.

Many of those deported had lived in the United States for years, the organization said, and some told Human Rights Watch that they had pending asylum applications. Most interviewees said they had fled Haiti because of the country’s prolonged security and humanitarian crises. Some left after the devastating 2010 earthquake, but most departed after the 2021 assassination of then-President Jovenel Moïse and the deepening violence and instability that followed.

The conditions awaiting returnees are severe. According to United Nations data cited by Human Rights Watch, at least 3,050 people were killed in Haitian violence during the first six months of 2026. Nearly 1.5 million people are internally displaced, and more than half of the country’s population needs humanitarian assistance.

Criminal groups have expanded their operations beyond Port-au-Prince into rural communities in at least five of Haiti’s 10 departments, Human Rights Watch said, despite the partial deployment in April of a U.N.-authorized force intended to combat the armed organizations. The security vacuum in much of the country has compounded Haiti’s humanitarian emergency.

Human Rights Watch urged the U.S. government to halt deportations while conditions make returns unsafe. It also called on the Senate to approve legislation already passed by the House that would extend Temporary Protected Status for Haitians through 2029.