If anyone still believes Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign is simply about removing violent criminals from the United States, the events of the past week should force another look.
On August 20, an ICE charter carrying more than 160 Haitian nationals landed in Cap-Haïtien, the first deportation flight to Haiti since Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was stripped from hundreds of thousands of Haitians. They could not even be flown into Haiti’s capital.
Port-au-Prince is considered so dangerous that the U.S. government currently prohibits U.S. commercial flights there because of gang violence. The State Department simultaneously warns Americans: “Do not travel to Haiti for any reason,” citing crime, terrorism, kidnapping, unrest, and limited healthcare. Yet America is sending Haitians back.
Some deportees reportedly covered their faces after arriving, fearful that gangs might identify them. They were reportedly given the equivalent of $76.40 to make their way home. Some were not even born in Haiti, but were sent there because they had a Haitian parent.
Haiti was only one part of an extraordinary week in American immigration.
On August 19, immigrant-rights organizations sued the Trump administration over a new rule allowing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to send asylum seekers directly into immigration court without first giving them the traditional opportunity to explain their claims during an interview with a trained asylum officer.
The government estimates that as many as 31% of the more than 1.4 million cases in the affirmative asylum system could be affected. Think about that. People fleeing persecution may have submitted written applications, believing they would eventually sit before an asylum officer and explain what happened to them. Under the new rule, some may never get that conversation.
As Adam Ryan Chang of Oasis Legal Services put it, an application can explain what happened, but an interview provides the context necessary to understand it. “Meaningful protection requires us to listen before we judge,” he said.
There is some good news: On August 21, a federal judge struck down the administration’s sweeping policy of blocking immigrant visas for nationals of 75 countries.
Judge Jeannette Vargas ruled that the policy was “contrary to law,” finding that visa applicants who could demonstrate they were likely to be self-sufficient were nevertheless being refused visas under a policy supposedly designed to prevent immigrants from becoming a financial burden.
The list overwhelmingly targeted countries outside Western Europe, including nations in the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Among Americans challenging the policy were U.S. citizens whose relatives in Jamaica, Ghana, Guatemala, and Ethiopia had been prevented from receiving visas.
Then came perhaps the most painfully ironic story of all.
U.S. Navy sailor Joshua Aviles was serving aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln after nine months being deployed in the Middle East when he learned that his father, Luis Manuel Aviles Roa, had been arrested by federal immigration authorities during a traffic stop in Key West, Florida.
DHS did not dispute the family’s assertion that his father has no criminal record, but stated: “Having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation’s laws.”
Of course it is not, but consider the image America has created.
A son is thousands of miles away aboard an American aircraft carrier, serving the country, while that same government detains his father for deportation.
Aviles wrote that he was working 12-plus-hour days while wondering how he could continue while knowing his father was in detention, “possibly being treated like a criminal.”
These stories involve different people and different areas of immigration law, but together, they reveal something larger: This is no longer simply a border crackdown.
Haitians who lived legally under TPS are losing protection, and asylum seekers attempting to use the legal process may lose a critical opportunity to tell their stories.
People seeking legal immigrant visas have faced sweeping restrictions so broad that a federal judge ruled them unlawful and even serving in the United States military does not necessarily protect an immigrant’s parent from the expanding reach of enforcement.
Every country has the right to enforce its immigration laws, but enforcement is not the same thing as abandoning proportionality, due process, and basic humanity.
America has spent generations telling immigrants to do things “the right way.” Apply legally; seek asylum legally; obtain temporary protection legally; serve this country. Work; pay taxes; follow the rules.
Increasingly, even those things appear to offer less protection, and that leaves a troubling question for immigrants watching America in 2026: If following the legal process, contributing to this country, and even having a child serving it are no longer enough, what exactly is the “right way” anymore?
Felicia J. Persaud is the founder and publisher of NewsAmericasNow.com, the only daily syndicated newswire and digital platform dedicated exclusively to Caribbean Diaspora and Black immigrant news across the Americas.
