In a significant escalation of immigration enforcement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched its second deportation flight to Haiti in a single week on August 27, 2026, marking a sharp departure from the long-standing average pace of one monthly deportation flight to the Caribbean nation. Operated by ICE Air Global X, charter flight A6196 departed Florida’s Opa-locka Executive Airport at 10:04 a.m. after originating in Alexandria, Louisiana, and carried 57 Haitian migrants bound for Cap-Haïtien. Among the deportees were multiple children who were born in the United States, with the youngest being just one year old, according to pre-arrival data shared with Haitian government officials. Just seven days prior, the first flight in this accelerated schedule transported 161 Haitian migrants, including a dozen individuals with prior criminal convictions.
This step-up in deportations follows a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that granted President Donald Trump the authority to terminate Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a humanitarian program that has allowed more than 300,000 Haitians to live and work legally in the U.S. since it was first introduced by the Obama administration in the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake. Even as legal challenges to the Supreme Court’s decision remain pending in lower courts, U.S. authorities notified Haitian officials last month of plans to increase deportation volumes, with an initial proposal to deport 250 Haitians per week via two weekly flights. Notably, the Haitian government has stated that it has not received formal, updated notification of the new deportation schedule to date.
The accelerated deportations have sparked widespread criticism from immigration rights advocates, who warn that Haiti is currently facing one of the worst security and humanitarian crises in its modern history. Of Haiti’s total population of nearly 12 million, more than half require urgent humanitarian assistance, driven by rapidly escalating gang violence and deepening extreme poverty. Approximately 1.5 million Haitians have been internally displaced by gang-related conflict, a figure that matches the total displacement caused by the 2010 earthquake that led to the creation of Haiti’s TPS designation. Advocates argue that mass deportations to a country facing such widespread instability are reckless and inhumane. This position stands in direct contrast to the DHS’s official stance, which claims that security conditions in Haiti have improved enough to justify the safe return of deported migrants.
The second weekly deportation flight comes amid a broader nationwide crackdown on immigration under the Trump administration, which has seen a surge in arrests of undocumented migrants. New government data shared by ICE with the Deportation Data Project, a joint research initiative between the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Los Angeles, shows that ICE carried out nearly 50,000 immigration arrests in July 2026, the highest monthly total recorded since the start of Trump’s second term. Of these arrests, more than 7,000 occurred in Florida and 500 in Ohio, two states that are home to large, established Haitian communities. Thousands of Haitian residents in these states now face growing risk of detention and deportation as enforcement measures ramp up following the TPS ruling.