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Perry B. Newman is the executive director of Konbit Sante.
For 25 years, Konbit Sante — founded and based in Maine — has worked to support a sustainable healthcare system in Cap-Haitien, the second-largest city in Haiti and Portland’s sister city. Through decades of partnership with the people of Haiti, deep ties have been forged between the country and our state.
Haitian doctors and nurses have visited Maine to share their experiences with nursing students and local physicians. Medical professionals from Maine have worked with Haitian counterparts to improve healthcare for mothers and children in Haiti.
These exchanges change and save lives, and they enrich all of us.
On June 25, however, the Supreme Court issued a decision paving the way for the Trump administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haiti. The decision impacts 350,000 people across the United States, including hundreds of people, and their families, here in Maine.
Temporary Protected Status was created by Congress in 1990. The law protects people who were already in the United States if something catastrophic happens in their home country preventing them from safely returning. TPS is designated for events like war, natural disaster, famine, and disease.
The values underpinning TPS are the same as our asylum and refugee resettlement system. They are the embodiment of the promises the U.S. made in the aftermath of World War II to never again return people to circumstances where their lives or freedom would be in peril.
In 2010, a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of people died. Thousands more were left with serious and permanent injuries. Millions were displaced as homes were leveled and infrastructure crumbled. In the wake of this disaster, the United States rightfully designated the country for TPS as part of its humanitarian response.
Recovery from a disaster of this magnitude would take many years in a country with considerably more wealth and resources than Haiti. In the United States, efforts to recover and rebuild in New Orleans continue more than 20 years after Hurricane Katrina.
But Haiti’s entire GDP is less than half of what the United States allocated just to ICE enforcement in 2026, and new disasters compounded the conditions the earthquake left. These include the cholera outbreak that killed thousands, Category 4 Hurricane Matthew in 2016, and more recently, destabilizing and violent political crisis.
Under TPS law, in order to protect human life, countries can be newly designated for protection, updating the underlying reasons for TPS and expanding protection to more people. And that is what previous secretaries of homeland security did over the years since the earthquake as conditions in Haiti devolved.
By terminating TPS for a country, the homeland security secretary is essentially saying that dangerous conditions no longer exist and people can safely return. Nothing could be further from the truth in Haiti. The country remains a very dangerous place. In our work in Cap-Haitien, Konbit Sante staff see it firsthand. Haiti’s internal resources and weakened infrastructure are already stretched beyond their breaking point, and gang violence continues to drive mass internal displacement. Hunger, malnutrition, disease, and human suffering are on the rise.
Over the years, hundreds of Haitian TPS holders have made Maine home. People have built their lives here, are raising families, and filling key roles in Maine’s workforce including in healthcare, agriculture, customer services, and more. Across the nation, Haitian TPS holders contribute nearly $6 billion annually to the U.S. economy, and pay $1.5 billion in taxes.
Haitian TPS holders have done all that is asked of them under U.S. law, have been extensively and repeatedly vetted, and have paid fees to the government. Now, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, they are on brink of being deported to one of the most catastrophic humanitarian disasters on the planet.
Congress can and must act to protect Haitian TPS holders. Stripping lawful status away from people, separating families, and costing Maine businesses their workers serves no one and harms all of us.
A bill that would override the Trump administration’s termination of TPS for Haiti and newly designate protection for the country has already passed the House, with broad bipartisan support. It was supported by both Rep. Jared Golden and Rep. Chellie Pingree. It now sits in the Senate. Sen. Angus King has already cosponsored and we call on Sen. Susan Collins to do the same.
At Konbit Sante, we believe that all people deserve access to compassionate, effective and dignified health care, just as all people deserve safety and to have other basic human needs met.
These are not political issues, and should never be treated as such. Maine must stand with our Haitian TPS residents now.