TPS termination for Haitians has reached Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where the first Sunday service after the protections ended brought sharply fewer people to the Word of Life Center in Salisbury. Roosevelt Toussaint said attendance fell by more than half, as fear spread through a community that depends on church gatherings, work, and mutual aid.
Word of Life Center in Salisbury
Toussaint, the senior pastor at the Word of Life Center since 1995, normally sees more than 500 people hear his Sunday sermon. Many Haitians in Salisbury work as farmworkers, caregivers, and in poultry plants, and about 10% of Salisbury’s 33,000 residents are Haitian.
The church canceled a bridal shower, a yard-sale barbeque, and English-language classes. Marjorie Estimé, a U.S. citizen, came to Sunday service in solidarity and wore a Haitian flag draped around her neck. She said, “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.”
June 25 and July 27
The end of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians followed a decision on June 25, when the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the government and allowed the program to end. The work permits were not extended on July 27, and the change now affects roughly 350,000 Haitians.
Toussaint said, “We’re expecting you to have compassion for our people. They haven’t done anything wrong.” He also 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.”
ICE check-ins and limits
Guerline Jozef of Haitian Bridge Alliance said ICE was using tactics to bring people into its offices to detain them or tell them to self-deport. She said, “Instead of them heavily descending on communities, they are using tactics to bring those people into their offices to either detain them... and telling them that if they don’t self deport, they will be called back, to report within a month.”
Reports also said Haitians were being called in for ankle bracelets and told not to travel more than 75 miles from their home address. That leaves Haitian residents in Salisbury and the Eastern Shore navigating church absences, canceled gatherings, and daily work routines under a narrower set of choices: stay in the U.S. without TPS or return to Haiti with no legal protection. At Sunday service, Toussaint told the congregation in Haitian Creole, “I’m praying this afternoon that God can make you invisible to the enemy.”
He added, “They put a lot of terror in your heart. But God has come to tell you: ‘Do not be afraid!’”
