Immigrants Need Sanctuary. Churches Are Finding New Ways to Offer It

A woman worships at St. Jerome Catholic Church in the Little Haiti neighborhood of Brooklyn, as the area braces for possible immigration enforcement actions on Haitian Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders, during a service spoken in Creole in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, July 28, 2026.

Hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the U.S. are living in uncertain times. On June 25, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could proceed with a plan to end Temporary Protected Statusa federal program that allows people to stay in the United States when the government considers their own country unsafefor around 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. Their work permits are scheduled to end July 24, leaving TPS holders at risk of deportation.

This uncertainty is not new. In 2010, President Barack Obama granted TPS to Haitians living in the U.S. after an earthquake killed approximately 200,000 people in Haiti. The original period was 18 months, but TPS has been renewed multiple times because of humanitarian concerns, gang violence, and political unrest.

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