Ketlie Luckett is devastated. When news dropped Thursday of the Supreme Court’s conservative 6-3 ruling to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for people from Haiti and Syria, the Chicago-area social worker thought about the years she and other activists have spent signing petitions and sending letters to legislators in hopes of saving immigrant protections.
Her organization, Haitian Congress to Fortify Haiti, just came off a win, too. A few months ago, she said, a Haitian man was picked up by federal immigration agents in the parking lot of a Walmart in suburban Skokie. According to Luckett, the man was sent to ICE detention centers in California, Indiana and even El Paso, Texas. The group worked with lawyers and a local church to free him from the Texas detention center. He traveled back to the Chicago area via Amtrak, and reunited with his family last month, she explained.
“He was legal. Because he has TPS, he has the work permit for five years, but they still took him,” said Luckett, who serves as treasurer for the Haitian Congress. She added that the man did not sign the detention processing paperwork, which she explained as a good thing because his signature would’ve authorized the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to deport him. According to the National Immigration Law Center, such paperwork, once signed, forfeits a person’s right to talk to a lawyer or judge, and possibly their ability to return to the U.S. or apply for legal status.
“Now our fear is because TPS has not been renewed, I believe that they [ICE] are going to be more aggressive out there, taking people. That’s our biggest fear,” Luckett said. “We know everybody’s going to be living in fear.”
TPS, enacted into law by Congress in 1990, is a government asylum program that allows eligible foreign-born immigrants to live and work legally in the U.S. if they cannot return to their home country because of natural disasters, armed conflicts or other extraordinary conditions. DHS has the authority to decide which foreign countries are eligible for TPS.
As of March 2025, according to the American Immigration Council, there were approximately 1.3 million people living with TPS status in the states. Additionally, in 2025 alone, at least 700,000 people lost their TPS status.
President Donald J. Trump has been threatening to end TPS for several African, Caribbean, Middle East and Latin American countries, and the Supreme Court’s decision gives him the authority to do so for Haiti and Syria. There are more than 330,000 Haitians, and 6,100 Syrians, living in the U.S. under TPS status. In Chicago alone, around 40,000 self-reported Haitians have settled here, according to the General Consulate of Haiti in Chicago.
“Those migrants who’ve been living under TPS protection, they have their children who are U.S. citizens. Their grandchildren are U.S. citizens. Would you imagine now they take them out of the country and they have to leave their family behind?” Luckett said.
She explained that there are Haitians who have been living under TPS for more than 30 years. “They established their home here,” Luckett said. “They work. They built a community. They built their life here. Would you believe that, after 30 years, you end up with no status and you have a fear of being deported soon, or ICE can be after you. This is really devastating.”
Patrick Brutus, vice president of the Haitian American Professional Network, pointed out that conditions in Haiti are completely different today than they were 36 years ago when TPS was enacted. Since the assasination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, he said, gangs and civil unrest have overtaken the country. And since the 1990s, multiple hurricanes, earthquakes and torrential rains have led to mass deaths, infrastructural damage and more.
“There is no greater argument for continuing TPS and, in fact, extending it for additional time for the Haitian people,” Brutus said. “There may be some lower court actions to try to halt that [Supreme Court] action, but the Supreme Court has ruled and, you know, we are a nation of laws. So this is now the law.”
The NAACP released a statement Thursday, writing that Congress “has the ability to reverse it and should immediately pass a permanent pathway to citizenship for TPS holders.” NAACP General Counsel Kristen Clarke also reacted to the ruling. In the written statement, she said the racial motivation behind the Trump administration’s decision is “simply undeniable.” While campaigning in 2024 for his second term in the White House, Trump went on a baseless and racist ramble about Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
“This decision flies in the face of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits intentional acts of racial discrimination,” Clarke’s statement reads. “At every turn, we see this administration undertaking policy motivated by a toxic combination of racism and xenophobia, intended to dehumanize, diminish, and erase Black people’s presence, our political power and our voice. There is no doubt that Supreme Court reform must be a part of our democracy reform agenda.”
Although “Operation Midway Blitz” ended last fall, and its leader, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino, reportedly retired, the federal immigration raids and detainments haven’t stopped in Chicago. Fasika Alem, programs director with the United African Organization (UAO), spoke about a situation that happened on Chicago’s South Side about a month ago.
A Senegalese community member, she said, told UAO that he was approached by what he described as federal immigration agents dressed in green fatigues and vests while exiting his South Shore apartment building. They asked for his name, referenced a list, and then let him go because his name wasn’t on the list. By and large, Alem said, the Senegalese people in the apartment building have already applied for asylum and have work authorization.
“I think they’re taking the route of least resistance. At least, that’s my opinion,” Alem said about immigration enforcement operations in Chicago, which didn’t end after “Midway Blitz.” “When they came into Chicago with a big show of force, there was a lot of pushback from the community. I think they’re realizing that it might be better to be quieter and target people who, as far as the system is concerned, are following the rules.”
Both Brutus and Alem see the Supreme Court ruling as only the beginning of more targeted arrests and deportations for all Black immigrants.
“Obviously, because of this TPS decision, the Haitian community is at the forefront. But if you look at immigration history in this country, the system has tried out and experimented its immigration policies on Haitians first,” Alem said.
Why Haitians? Brutus pointed to the Haitian Revolution, during which a years-long insurrection by enslaved Africans in Haiti won independence from French colonial rule in 1804. American sociologist and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois has famously argued that that the Haitian Revolution played a significant role in the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade a few years later. The Haitian Revolution is etched in history as the first successful slave rebellion.
“Black resilience is personified in the Haitian folks,” Brutus said.
That’s why the fight for civil and immigrant rights must continue, Alem said.
“For Black immigrants, or any immigrant in this country, it’s also important on our side to understand that the fight for civil rights is a very important part of why we’re able to be here, but the fight is not over,” Alem said. “So how do we build solidarity and address some of the issues we have within our communities to build together rather than allow this administration and its supporters to use it to divide us?”
