The Boston Globe29%
Worried Haitians prepare for expiration of federal protections 70%
By Brian MacQuarrie88% Jaden Perry88%
7/23/2026, 3:39:53 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 21 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Pessimism Bias, and Appeal to Authority, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 37.9% saturation with 396 hits. Analysis detected 1,969 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,045 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 62.6% and a BS Rank of 70% (6,719 of 21,887 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 69.30% of the article peer group.
Worried Haitians prepare for expiration of federal protections
Anxious and fearful, more than 40,000 Haitians in Massachusetts are bracing for an uncertain, dangerous future if federal approval to live and work in the United States is not extended past Monday, when it currently is set to expire.
“Family destabilization, family separation, that’s what we’re getting ready for now because of this horrible tragedy coming next week,” said the Rev.
Dieufort Fleurissaint, senior pastor of Total Health Christian Ministries in Mattapan.
The Trump administration last month received Supreme Court approval to revoke Temporary Protected Status without judicial review, a decision that affects hundreds of thousands of Haitians who fled their country after a massive earthquake in 2010, ongoing violence, and other natural disasters.
On Thursday, protesters at a Boston City Hall rally railed against the move.
“I am angry,” City Councilor Ruthzee Louijeune told the crowd.
“Our TPS holders are our neighbors.
They are our workers.
They are our friends, and they are our family members.
What is happening is a disgrace.”
For 52-year-old Wilca Vilson, who attended the rally, the question of what’s next is unanswerable.
“Unfortunately, I cannot go back now,” said Vilson, who works in a nursing home and has lived in the United States under TPS since 2011.
“My house collapsed.
My job collapsed.
I lost everything in Haiti” in the earthquake.
In addition, she said, gang violence has made Haiti increasingly dangerous since the assassination of its president, Jovenel Moïse, in 2021.
“There’s no place to live.
They kidnap people.
They rape women, you know?”
Vilson said.
Under TPS, foreign nationals facing armed conflict, environmental disasters, or other major crises are allowed to live and work legally in the United States without fear of deportation.
TPS for Haitians has been extended multiple times since the earthquake.
“They cannot go back to Haiti,” Fleurissaint said.
“Many who left Haiti have no ties there anymore.
Their children were born in this country, and those children know nothing about Haiti.”
Now, confusion is rampant among the Haitian community.
Work authorizations for TPS holders initially had been scheduled to end this Friday.
But on Wednesday, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., paused that deadline through the weekend.
“Unfortunately, confusion has already led some employers to terminate Haitian workers before it is legally required,” according to a newsletter drafted by Pathway for Immigrant Workers, a legal-aid organization based in Boston.
Overall, thousands of Massachusetts jobs are in limbo, particularly in the health-care industry where many Haitians work as medical technicians, orderlies, and caretakers for the elderly and disabled.
“People think of TPS holders as dependent on the government,” Fleurissaint said.
“No, these are home-care workers.
They are working in retail, hospitality, food sectors.”
The Massachusetts Senior Care Association has estimated that up to 2,000 of their workers may lose work authorization, according to Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office.
Campbell joined 18 other attorneys general this week in calling on Congress to extend TPS for Haitians, whose Greater Boston community is one of the largest in the United States.
The US House of Representatives approved an extension of TPS to 2029.
However, the Senate on Wednesday blocked the measure, which had been introduced by Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts.
“Temporary Protected Status holders are our neighbors, friends, loved ones, and huge drivers of our local economies.
They deserve to be treated with dignity and respect,” Markey said in a statement.
Christopher White, president of Road to Responsibility, a Marshfield service provider for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, said he could lose 17 employees because of the TPS decision.
If an extension is not granted, White said, he will have lost about 130 Haitian workers under President Trump’s overall immigration crackdown, or an eighth of his workforce.
“Personally, I’m appalled by it.
This is a tragedy,” White said.
“I feel for our members who are losing trusted caregivers and people whom they have known for years.
“And I feel terribly for my Haitian colleagues who now are out of work and scared,” he added.
“They don’t want to go back to Haiti because of the very real fear that they’ll be killed if they do go back.”
Revoking TPS causes harm far beyond the angst and fear that Haitians are feeling, said Jeffrey Thielman, president of the International Institute of New England, a refugee and immigrant resettlement agency.
“It’s hurting our economy, it’s hurting our culture, and I think it’s hurting our happiness because having people in our community who are living in fear is an awful thing,” Thielman said.
“For the immigrant community,” he added, “they feel like they’re living in a police state just like the police state they left when they came to the United States.”
Legal-aid agencies are stepping up to explore whether TPS holders are eligible to remain in the United States through asylum, family-based, or employment options.
However, Leslie Ditrani, executive director of Pathway for Immigrant Workers, said finding another avenue to stay might be difficult.
At the City Hall rally, Mayor Michelle Wu joined the protests against revoking TPS.
“We cannot function as a society, as a community, as an economy, as a people when the bonds of trust are ripped apart,” Wu said.
“And so I pledge that the City of Boston will always do whatever we can possibly do to organize, to fight, to urge action.
Congress must act.”
Fleurissaint, the Mattapan pastor, told the protesters of a mother of two whom he had encouraged to buy a house when she had the chance.
Now, her future and theirs hang in the balance.
“She comes and calls me, ‘What [am I] going to do?
Am I going to pay the mortgage?
Okay, and what’s going to happen to my two boys?’”
Fleurissaint said.
Still, he said, she and other TPS holders show up to church as they hold out faith for a “miracle” decision to extend the program.
“While they’re worshipping, they are weeping as well,” Fleurissaint said.
“You can see the tears coming from their eyes.
But despite that, they continue to raise their hands, saying, ‘God, I have hope.
I have hope.’”
Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at brian.macquarrie@globe.com.
Jaden Perry can be reached at jaden.perry@globe.com.
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