Haiti TPS Ends: NY Restaurants Collapse, Workers Lose Status

What if your work permit expired last month and you only found out by email? That is exactly what happened to David, a 25-year-old Haitian immigrant in Brooklyn. On June 26, his nonprofit employer emailed him: his work permit had expired, and they could no longer employ him. He had been working legally under Temporary Protected Status (TPS) — a humanitarian protection that lets people from dangerous countries live and work in the US — since 2021. Now he is living on savings he says will last about two months.

What the Supreme Court ruling changed — and when

About a month before July 27, 2026, the US Supreme Court ruled that federal courts cannot review the Trump administration's decision to end TPS for Haiti. That ruling cleared the way for the termination to take effect on July 27. When Wesly Simon walked into his Brooklyn restaurant, Djon Djon, that Monday morning and checked the USCIS website, the alert was already there: Haiti TPS terminated, effective that day. Nine of his employees lost their work authorization instantly. Simon, a naturalized US citizen, now works double shifts alone to keep the restaurant open. Sales have dropped 40 to 60%, and ICE's visible presence in the Little Caribbean neighborhood has kept customers away. "I'm running an immigrant business in an immigrant neighborhood," Simon said. "We don't know what we're gonna be doing in the next week or two."

Fred Raphael, owner of Rebel Restaurant & Bar in Manhattan, has watched the same collapse. Two kitchen workers are gone — one self-deported to Brazil, another stopped coming to work out of fear of taking the bus from Brooklyn to Manhattan. His kitchen staff dropped from five to two or three per shift. He posted job listings for servers and bartenders. No one applied. "It would be a shame to have to close my doors, not because the public didn't want to support, but because of everything that's happening with this community," Raphael said. He is approaching his sixth year in business and fears it may be his last.

The scale is enormous. Roughly 350,000 Haitian TPS holders in the US lost their protected status. In New York alone, more than 40,000 Haitian TPS holders contributed over $140 million annually in state and local taxes. Nationally, about 200,000 Haitian TPS holders held jobs in 2025 — in health care, food service, warehousing, retail and caregiving — contributing more than $1.1 billion to New York state's economy each year. The Supreme Court's decision also affects roughly 1.3 million TPS holders from other countries, but for Haitians the impact was immediate. Haiti was first designated for TPS in 2010 after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake killed about 300,000 people. Conditions have only worsened since — including the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and gang takeovers that displaced 1.5 million people inside the country.

What to do if you had Haiti TPS

• Check your asylum options immediately. If you have a pending asylum case — like David does — that case continues independently of TPS. Do not abandon it. Contact your attorney or a nonprofit immigration legal services provider to understand your current status.
• Do not self-deport without speaking to an immigration lawyer first. Some people may qualify for other forms of relief, such as asylum, withholding of removal, or protection under the Convention Against Torture, even after TPS ends.
• If ICE contacts you or comes to your home, you have the right to remain silent and the right to speak with an attorney before answering questions. You do not have to open the door without a signed judicial warrant.
• If you are an employer who lost TPS workers, document everything carefully. Employing someone whose work authorization has expired can result in fines ranging from $800 to $28,000 per worker, according to restaurant owner Wesly Simon.

What to do, step by step — see our guide “How to Apply for Asylum”.