On Thursday, August 27, 2026, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent its second deportation flight to Haiti in a week. ICE Air Global X charter flight A6196, departing from Alexandria, Louisiana, took off from Opa-locka Executive Airport at 10:04 a.m. bound for Cap-Haïtien, carrying 57 Haitians, including several children born in the United States. These children were among the families on board the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) charter flight that landed in Cap-Haitien.

The youngest deportee on board was a one-year-old child born in the United States, according to information provided to Haitian authorities before the plane's arrival.

Until now, deportation flights to Haiti had been occurring on average once a month. The previous flight last Thursday transported 161 deportees, including a dozen with criminal records.

However, last month, U.S. authorities warned Haitian authorities of a possible increase in deportations following the Supreme Court's decision authorizing President Donald Trump to end Haiti's Temporary Protected Status (TPS), even though the legal challenge to that decision is still ongoing. The initial plan called for the return of 250 Haitians per week, via two weekly flights. The Haitian government says it has received no notification on this matter.

The increased number of flights could lead to a rise in arrests and deportation proceedings against Haitians following the end of TPS. More than 300,000 Haitians were enrolled in this humanitarian program, which allowed them to live and work legally in the United States due to the situation in their country. Haitian immigrant rights organizations and other stakeholders argue that Haiti remains far too dangerous for mass returns, while the DHS maintains that the situation has improved sufficiently to allow Haitians to return.

Of Haiti’s nearly 12 million inhabitants, more than half are in need of humanitarian assistance due to escalating gang violence and worsening poverty. Furthermore, nearly 1.5 million people have been displaced by gangs, as many as during the 2010 earthquake, which prompted the Obama administration to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Haiti.

This flight comes amid a surge in gang attacks in Haiti and increased immigration repression by the Trump administration, which led to nearly 50,000 arrests in July. This is the highest number of monthly arrests recorded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) since the beginning of Trump's second term, according to recently released government data provided by ICE to the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley, and UCLA. Among these arrests are more than 7,000 in Florida and 500 in Ohio, two states with large Haitian communities that now face the risk of detention and deportation.

SL/ HaitiLibre