Haitians across New York City are bracing for the possibility of mass deportations in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing the Trump administration to remove thousands of longtime New Yorkers from the country.

The ruling, which permits the federal government to strip more than 300,000 Haitians and roughly 3,000 Syrians of their temporary protected status, sparked fears in Brooklyn’s Little Haiti of friends and neighbors being taken from their homes and thrust into the gang violence plaguing their home country.

“Haiti is no place to go back to, the whole state is gang member ruled,” said Little Haiti resident Jacklin. “I had one friend who was deported, and after three days, a gang member, they killed him, they shot him.”

“No one is safe,” he added.

Pluverge, an ice cream maker at Taste the Tropics, came to the United States on asylum after he was kidnapped and tortured by gang members in his home country.

“They put a glass bottle in the fire and tortured me,” Pluverge said as he lifted up his sleeves to show his scars from the encounter. “My sister went to the bank, they put me in a car and dropped me in the middle of nowhere.”

The ice cream maker said Brooklyn’s Haitian community feels powerless as a renewed federal crackdown looms on the horizon.

“All we can do is wait and see what will happen. Haiti is no place to go back to. I don’t know what people are going to do.”

In February 2025, President Trump formally moved to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. Andre Augustin, who fled Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake and has been in the U.S. under TPS ever since, said he’s been living in fear of deportation.

“It’s not been easy,” he said. “I can’t think of what I’m going to do next. I only hope God will protect me.”

A cab driver, Augustin worked as a grocer in his home country until gangs looted and burned his store.

“I have nothing to go back to,” he said. “Trump is a racist, Haitians know the history of him and his family.”

In addition to the fear of deportation, the ruling puts thousands of immigrants at risk of losing their work authorization and their jobs, according to a Haitian-American journalist.

“TPS allows someone to obtain legal authority to work, that’s what their work permit becomes tied to,” said Macollvie Neel, special projects editor at Haitian Times. “For a lot of people, that work authorization is going to be invalid, within a few weeks, if not already.”

Neel said many community members have made preparations in anticipation of the ruling, including applying for asylum. Meanwhile, immigration advocates are lobbying the Senate to pass a House bill to extend TPS for Haitians.

But the fear of being snatched by ICE agents remains, Neel said.

“There’s fear. The fear is mostly around ICE agents grabbing people off the street and detaining them and holding them, which we know is very dangerous, and has proven to be fatal for quite a few people who are Haitian,” said Neel, referring to the death of several Haitians in ICE custody, including Jean Wilson Brutus, who died while at the Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark

Some are seeing an impending job loss caused by the ruling as the beginning of the end to the city’s Haitian community.

“All the Haitians who work in hospitals, schools and small businesses will be out of work,” said Mical Dorce, 65, of Little Haiti. “I can’t see a future for our people. This is a really tough life, and all these people will have nothing.”

Sandra Britto, a patient care technician working in Lower Manhattan and a member of the healthcare workers union 1199SEIU, said the ruling would put thousands of Haitian immigrants out on the streets.

“After 2010, the earthquake, the people that they’re gonna send back have nowhere to live. They have no homes. They’re about to send them in the streets, to make them homeless,” Britto said at a press conference hosted by the health care union Thursday afternoon. “This is inhumane. Inhumane.”

Joining Britto at the press conference were Mayor Mamdani and Governor Hochul, who both blasted the court’s ruling.

“Today hundreds of thousands of individuals woke up with this dread, this fear in their hearts, because their rights are being abandoned by the Trump administration and the Supreme Court of the United States,” Hochul said at the press conference at 1199SEIU’s Midtown headquarters.

Hochul said the looming deportations made possible by the ruling would “cripple” the state’s health care system.

“Who’s going to show up tomorrow to take care of Grandma?” she asked. “Who’s stepping up? We need to challenge this, fight this and say, ‘Not here. Not now. Not ever.'”

Last month, the governor announced a series of new laws protecting immigrants from federal enforcement, including a bill that would ban ICE agents from wearing masks while operating in the state.

“We should know who you are,” Hochul said. “You should not be able to go into our communities to intimidate, threaten and create fear.”

Mamdani said the city would stand with its immigrant communities, and urged anyone with questions to call the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA) free Immigration Legal Support Hotline at (800) 354-0365.

“More than 3 million of the people who call this city home are immigrants,” Mamdani said. “No matter where you were born, no matter how far you had to travel to get here, you are a New Yorker.”

More than 620,000 immigrants were deported from the U.S. during the immigrant crackdown last year, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

In New York City, ICE arrested more than 5,500 people between Jan. 2025 and March 2026, a 71% increase compared to a similar period under the Biden administration, according to a City Hall audit documenting the crackdown.

The report found that immigration agents employed deception during the clampdown, using tricks that included pretending to be firefighters, asking to use the bathroom to gain access to buildings and attempting to conduct a “wellness check” on a minor in Administration for Children’s Services custody.

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