Empty Pews and Fear of ICE on Maryland’s Eastern Shore After TPS Ends for Haitians

These are harrowing days for the Word of Life Center, a church that has long been a vibrant hub of the Haitian community on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. A bridal shower and yard-sale barbeque were canceled, as were English-language classes. Roosevelt Toussaint, the senior pastor of the nondenominational congregation in Salisbury, said attendance at Sunday’s service dropped by more than half—normally, more than 500 people would have heard his sermon, titled “What to do in a time of crisis.”

The reason for the empty seats, Toussaint said, is that many community members are unwilling to venture from their homes, fearing arrests and deportation since the Trump administration moved to end Temporary Protected Status for more than 1 million people from numerous countries. Among those affected: roughly 350,000 Haitians who have been living and working legally in the U.S. for years.

A Community in Fear

In Salisbury, the Eastern Shore’s biggest city, about 10% of the 33,000 residents are Haitian, many of them employed under TPS as farmworkers, caregivers, and in the poultry plants that are the region’s economic backbone. Like other Haitians losing TPS, they face an agonizing choice: try to stay in the U.S. and find underground work, constantly fearful of being caught by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, or return to a nation so overwhelmed by gang violence and poverty that some feel deportation is tantamount to a death sentence.

Toussaint, the Word of Life Center’s pastor since 1995, said he had a message for President Donald Trump. “We’re expecting you to have compassion for our people. They haven’t done anything wrong,” Toussaint said. “All they came to this country to do is to work, to make a difference in our economy. … There’s no security at home. If you really send us over there, you send us to die.”

At Sunday’s service—the first since TPS protections expired—Toussaint exhorted his congregants to persevere. “I’m praying this afternoon that God can make you invisible to the enemy,” he told them in Haitian Creole. “They put a lot of terror in your heart. But God has come to tell you: Do not be afraid!”

Some congregants who are U.S. citizens attended the service in solidarity with those losing TPS. Among them was Marjorie Estimé, who wore a Haitian flag draped around her neck. “I want to tell the president of the United States to stop the ICE program, so that the people can work, so ICE can stop shooting them, persecuting them, and we can go back to normal,” Estimé said.

ICE Enforcement Tactics

According to advocates and attorneys, ICE is calling Haitians in for ankle bracelets and telling them not to travel more than 75 miles (121 kilometers) from their home address. “Instead of them heavily descending on communities, they are using tactics to bring those people into their offices to either detain them or fit them with an ankle monitor, and telling them that if they don’t self-deport, they will be called back to report within a month,” said Guerline Jozef, president of the Haitian Bridge Alliance.

Throughout the past week, news spread on social media about arrests by immigration authorities at gas stations and outside supermarkets. “We had a population living legally, raising their kids, paying their bills, and with the decision (to end TPS), they were left in limbo,” said Marie D. Fouché, founder and executive director of Safe Harbor Circles, which supports immigrant communities across the Eastern Shore and recorded more than a dozen arrests of immigrants recently, including some with TPS. “They have left their kids at home,” she said. “They went to the grocery, shopping at Walmart to cook for them and feed their family. But they got arrested in the parking lot, and they’ll never go back.”

Asked about ICE enforcement activities in Salisbury, the Department of Homeland Security said via email that it “does not discuss ongoing or future operations.” “Temporary Protected Status is exactly that—temporary,” the email said. “For too long, TPS has been allowed to function as a de facto amnesty program despite Congress never intending it to be permanent.”

At a nearly empty barber shop in Salisbury, a Haitian with TPS ventured in for a haircut. Like others, he asked to remain anonymous for fear of deportation. “They’re not going after the people committing crimes,” said the 39-year-old man, who has been a caregiver at a nursing home since moving to Salisbury in 2020. “When I go out to the street, I’m in fear.”

The Supreme Court Ruling

The TPS termination affecting Haitians was challenged in district courts. On June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Mullin v. Doe, allowing the Trump administration to end TPS for Haitians and Syrians. The Court held that the TPS statute bars judicial review of non-constitutional claims, with Justice Samuel Alito writing that “none of the cited statements by either the President or the Secretary was overtly racial.”

Justice Elena Kagan, in a dissent joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, wrote that the evidence of animus included “statements by the President so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print,” including remarks invoking the Springfield pet-eating hoax and describing Haiti as a “shithole country.” As The Marshall Project reported, the ruling affects some 350,000 Haitians and more than 6,000 Syrians, and the legal precedent could ultimately affect 1.3 million people from 17 countries that have TPS.

“The Supreme Court’s decision means that many, many people are going to die violent, needless deaths,” said Geoffrey Pipoly, an attorney for TPS holders from Haiti whose lawsuit sparked the Supreme Court case.

On July 27, work permits for Haitian TPS holders were not extended, and fear mounted in communities—not only due to the loss of jobs but also because it exposed them to deportation. “It’s just like a hurricane at Category 5—that’s how bad it is,” said Samson Orneus, a member of Toussaint’s church who helps lead the local Haitian Development Center of Delmarva.

Broader Impact

The immigration crackdown has upended lives far beyond Salisbury. In South Florida, home to roughly 500,000 people of Haitian descent, NPR reported that Farah Larrieux, a Haitian TPS holder who has lived in the U.S. for roughly two decades, has stocked her refrigerator and covered her front door window because she fears ICE could show up at her home. “If I don’t get mistreated by ICE at the detention center, I may be killed in Haiti,” Larrieux said. “My blood will be on Trump’s hands.”

In Springfield, Ohio, DHS issued call-in letters to Haitian immigrants directing them to ICE field offices near Cincinnati and Columbus. Some were fitted with ankle monitors and given immigration court dates roughly 30 days later. The department is also offering a $2,600 stipend and free flight to Haiti through the CBP Home App for those who choose voluntary self-deportation.

The United States initially gave TPS to Haitians following a devastating 2010 earthquake and extended it several times since. Yet almost 1.5 million people have been displaced in Haiti because of gang violence, and most Haitians need humanitarian aid. Haiti has been in a national state of emergency since 2024, according to a U.S. State Department advisory telling Americans not to travel there.

“What this administration is doing hurts me so much because it’s inhumane,” said Leila Borrero Krouse, an immigration specialist with CATA, a nonprofit supporting Eastern Shore farmworkers. “In all of these years that I’ve been working with immigrants, I’ve never met a criminal, a rapist, an abuser. Most come to take jobs that others don’t want. And it’s heartbreaking to see how they’re suffering.”

What’s Next

As the Haitian community on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and across the nation grapples with the end of TPS, the immediate future remains uncertain. Some face the prospect of self-deportation or detention, while others may seek asylum or other legal remedies. Community leaders and advocates are urging Congress to act, and immigrant rights organizations continue to provide support and legal assistance.

For now, the empty pews at the Word of Life Center stand as a stark reminder of the human cost of the policy change. Patricia Grace Louis-Jacques, a nursing student at Salisbury University with family members and friends affected by the end of TPS, described the impact: “From that moment, I knew things got bad. Their lives have tremendously changed.”

As Toussaint told his congregation in Haitian Creole: “Do not be afraid!” But for the thousands of Haitians who once filled the pews of Salisbury’s churches, fear has become a daily reality—and the road ahead remains deeply uncertain.