People hold Haitian flags and signs during a rally in support of immigrants living in the United States with temporary protected status, or TPS, Thursday, July 9, 2026, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) Leaders of enemy nations seeking to harm the U.S. economy and worsen the affordability crisis plaguing American families would love to deprive our country of hundreds of thousands of essential workers.
Fortunately for our enemies — but unfortunately for our country — this is exactly what President Trump is doing with his irrational anti-immigration policies, which primarily keep out and deport hardworking immigrants of color.
The latest example of this is the Trump administration’s move to revoke the legal status of more than 300,000 Haitian immigrants and about 50,000 immigrants from other countries living lawfully in the U.S. under a program called Temporary Protected Status.
A Supreme Court ruling in June said the government could revoke the work permits of these temporary status recipients and begin deportation proceedings against them July 27. The ruling overturned a lower court decision that found the move to curtail the status was “in part” based on “racial animus.”
As a result of the Supreme Court decision, employers have already begun firing Haitian employees who have lost the protection of Temporary Protected Status.
Trump has demonized unauthorized immigrants for years and claimed in an executive order on the first day of his second term that they are staging a dangerous “invasion” of the U.S.
The president even said such immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” He later denied knowing that Adolf Hitler used the same language about the 6 million Jews his Nazi regime murdered in the Holocaust.
Trump falsely posted on social media that Democrats want to “allow Criminals, the Mentally Insane, and Lunatics from all over the World to come into our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, putting Americans in serious danger.”
In fact, a study by Northwestern University found that between 1870 and 2020, immigrants were less likely than people born in the U.S. to be imprisoned for crimes.
The status program was created with bipartisan congressional support and signed into law by Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1990. It protects foreigners from being deported to countries that are unsafe due to natural disasters or armed conflicts.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is asking Congress to continue Temporary Protected Status, saying in a July 10 letter to Senate leadership that its preservation is necessary “to prevent significant disruption to America’s work force and avoid an unnecessary humanitarian crisis.”
More than 1 million immigrants have been authorized to stay in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status since it was created. Some 70 percent are employed, including many who hold low-wage jobs that employers have a hard time filling with Americans.
Many people protected until now by this status have worked in the U.S. for decades and, as a group, live with an estimated 390,000 children and more than 410,000 adults who are American citizens.
In addition to forcing U.S. citizens to leave our country if they want to remain with their immigrant parents or partners, mass deportations of workers from Haiti and other countries could force employers to let crops die in farm fields, close factories, and leave hospitals and nursing homes without enough workers to adequately care for the sick and elderly.
If this happens, American consumers will be hit with higher prices for scarce products. U.S. citizens will lose jobs when their employers shutter their businesses. Patients unable to get needed care will suffer and some could even die. Fewer homes will be built, worsening the shortage of affordable housing.
There is no rational reason for Trump to punish Americans with these self-inflicted wounds.
Some 95 percent of Haiti’s population is Black. Immigrants from Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan — overwhelmingly Black nations in Africa — are also among those losing their status.
Making his disdain for Black people clear, Trump admitted in 2025 that during his first term he asked at a meeting on immigration, “why is it we only take people from s—hole countries?” He added: “Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden — just a few — let us have a few, from Denmark … Send us some nice people … But we always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.”
This racist rant makes clear that Trump believes immigrants from predominantly white countries are “nice” and far better than Black immigrants.
As further evidence of this, Trump cut the number of refugees admitted into the U.S. from more than 100,000 in President Joe Biden’s last year in office to just 6,700 between October 2025 and May this year. All but three of those refugees were white South Africans, whom Trump falsely claims are being persecuted in the Black-majority nation.
America is successful and exceptional because we are a diverse nation of immigrants from many nations and races, not in spite of it. A nation famous for the welcoming words of the poem on a bronze plaque inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, which says in part: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.”
It’s sad that the president of the United States embraces the slogan Make America Great Again, but rejects the immigration that has played an important part in making our country great.
A. Scott Bolden is an attorney, NewsNation contributor, former chair of the Washington, D.C. Democratic Party and a former New York state prosecutor.
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