What Still Has to Get Through

The day after the election, the man who runs the Department of Homeland Security wrote three words on a social media account and left them there.

“Deportations will continue.”

Markwayne Mullin posted it on Wednesday, shortly after half past two in the afternoon, Eastern time. The newsroom that reported it — the national desk of the Sinclair station group, in a piece bylined Jessica A. Botelho on Thursday — says that by early the next afternoon the post had been seen more than 4.6 million times. The same report notes, in the newsroom’s own voice, that Congress can shape immigration enforcement through its control of money and its power to hold hearings, but that the president and the executive agencies keep authority over most day-to-day enforcement decisions, and that a change in party control alone would not automatically end deportations. The incoming Congress takes office in January.

That article names no Haitian and no Syrian. It does not use the words Temporary Protected Status once. It is here anyway, because of what people are being told this week — that the election was the thing that was going to fix this. This page already said, on Nov. 4, that Democrats winning both houses changed nothing about TPS. What is new is that the department itself has now answered the same question, in its secretary’s words rather than ours.

So nothing was lifted on Tuesday night. Everything still has to get through a door. Here are the doors, and what can be finished at each one this week.

The check-in desk

The appointment is still the appointment. On Nov. 6, three San Diego newsrooms reported that an 8-year-old Haitian boy who had held TPS was taken into federal custody at a scheduled check-in; his uncle had brought him because, as the school district put it, he did not want to break the law. That entry is on this page with both sides of it, including what the government says and what this page cannot settle.

It would be easy to read that as a reason to stop going. It is not. Missing a check-in or a hearing is the one thing that can turn a case with options into a removal order entered while you are not in the room. What the San Diego case argues for is not staying home — it is not going alone and not going empty-handed.

This week: write down the date, time and address of your next appointment, and put a second copy somewhere another adult in the house can find it. If you have a lawyer, tell them the date before you go. If you do not, call one of the free services on the help page and ask whether anyone can go with you. Ask, in writing if you can, for a copy of anything you are asked to sign, and keep your own copy rather than handing over the only one.

The door of the detention centre

A release order is not the same thing as being released. Between Oct. 27 and Nov. 3, by the account this page published on Nov. 7, at least 17 people were re-arrested as they walked out of the detention centre in Aurora, Colorado, after federal judges had ordered them released. One is a 27-year-old Haitian father who had been held 14 months. The government’s own court filings say another man was flown out for removal before being released. On Nov. 6, a federal judge summoned ICE to explain exactly this pattern.

The practical lesson is narrow and worth more than any prediction. A judge’s order is a piece of paper, and paper does not enforce itself at a door.

This week: if a judge has ordered a relative released, be physically present at the facility on the day, and ask the lawyer to put into the order itself that the person may not be re-arrested on the spot or placed on GPS monitoring as a condition. Write down the hour you arrived, the name of anyone you spoke to and what they said. If your relative is moved, the court that matters moves with them, so get the new facility’s name and the date in writing the same day. The detainee locator guide walks through the search.

The courtroom

Go to the hearing. Whatever anyone tells you about a courthouse, about an election, or about what a new Congress might do, not appearing can produce a removal order in absentia, and that is far harder to undo than almost anything else on this page.

If somebody has told you that a judge has already ordered your removal, you do not have to take their word for it, and you do not have to pay anyone to find out. You can check your own case for free: call the automated immigration court line at 1-800-898-7180, which runs 24 hours a day and will give your next hearing date and any decision by A-number, or look yourself up at acis.eoir.justice.gov. Two honest warnings about it. The line works in English and Spanish only, not Haitian Creole, so if you need Creole, have someone you trust sit with you. And if you have never had an immigration court case, you will find nothing there — that is the system telling you it has no case for you, not telling you that you are safe.

The road south

Haiti’s southern departments spent this week watching an institution empty out. The resignation of Jean Ernest Muscadin as government commissioner in Miragoâne was formally accepted on Nov. 6, and an interim replacement was named. Residents in Nippes, Sud, Sud-Est and Grand’Anse told Vant Bèf Info they fear armed groups will use the gap; a law practitioner in Grand’Anse said plainly that nobody wants to wait until the gangs arrive to start taking measures. No authority has announced any change in the security situation in those four departments, in either direction.

In the same departments, something was also arriving. On Nov. 7 the same paper reported that the state economic and social assistance fund, FAES, opened a new community canteen at Croix-Martyrs in the Dèyè Fò area of Les Cayes on Nov. 4, began handing out hot meals at two more places in the town, and restocked two canteens at Thomassin 32 so they could keep cooking. This page has put it on the feed. It is a report, not a guarantee: it does not say what a meal costs or whether there is any charge, what hours the canteens keep, or how long the supplies last, and this page could not confirm any of that with FAES itself.

This week: if you have family in the south, call and ask what they can see on their own road and at their own market today, rather than what they have heard, and write down the date and what they tell you. Nobody has to leave the United States because of any of this. If you are weighing going back on your own, talk to a lawyer first, because leaving can affect whether you are able to return. And nobody may charge you a fee to sign a relative up for a government food programme.

The kitchen table

This is the door nobody else controls, and it is the one that can be finished without anyone’s permission.

Put the household’s papers in one place this week: passports and any identity documents, birth certificates, every immigration notice and envelope you have been sent, work records, your children’s school and medical information, and the phone numbers of a lawyer and one trusted adult who is not in the house. Photograph each page and leave copies with someone outside your home. Write down who would collect your children from school if you were not there that afternoon, and tell that person. The family planning tools set it out step by step, and the know-your-rights page covers what to do and say if ICE comes to the door.

What has not changed

TPS for Haiti and Syria is terminated, effective July 27, 2026, and the work permits ended the same day. Read this week against the record rather than against the rumours: USCIS, read on Nov. 8, still lists only El Salvador, Lebanon, Sudan and Ukraine as currently designated, and still states that the Haiti and Syria designations are terminated effective July 27. Its I-9 news index, the page that would carry any extension of work permits, has nothing for Haiti newer than July 29 and nothing for Syria at all. The Federal Register, queried the same day, has published no TPS notice of any kind, for any country, since the election.

And the thing that has not changed is the thing worth ending on. Losing TPS is still not a judge ordering you personally to leave, and most people who lost it have no such order. If a judge has already ordered your removal, that order did not go away, and you should see a lawyer this week — but that is a minority, and it is a question with an answer you can check yourself in one free phone call.

No new law has given anyone their status back. There is nothing to apply for. Nobody may charge you a fee to sign you up for anything a new Congress might do.

This is not a prediction about you. It is a list of doors, and five things that can be done at them before next week.