Vichy Republicans Vote With Democrats to Keep 330,000 Temporary Haitians Here Permanently

Six House Republicans crossed the aisle to vote with the Democrat bloc to oppose President Trump's directive to eliminate so-called "Temporary Protected Status" from 350,000 Haitians who've been squatting in the U.S. "temporarily" since 2010.

Mark these names down: Don Bacon (NE-02), Maria Salazar (FL-27), Carlos Gimenez (FL-28), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01), Mike Lawler (NY-17), and Nicole Malliotakis (NY-11).

NEW: Six House Republicans voted with Democrats today to advance Rep. Ayanna Pressley's (D-MA) HR965, which would provide Temporary Protected Status to Haitians in the US for 3 years. Motion passed 219-209. It will now go to a final House vote tomorrow. The six House GOP to vote… pic.twitter.com/uIZOyZHOrh

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) April 15, 2026

To be clear, this action does little but make a statement.

The vote was forced using an increasingly popular legislative tool called a discharge petition that allows 218 or more representatives to circumvent the House speaker to bring a vote to the floor. Final passage of the bill in the House is expected Thursday or Friday.

The measure helping Haitian immigrants faces an uncertain fate in the Senate, but the House vote demonstrates rare Republican willingness to break with the White House. It is the first time GOP members have voted to invalidate Trump’s tougher immigration policies this legislative term.

All this action did was get the bill onto the House calendar. The odds of it passing aren't great. The odds of the Senate taking it up, much less passing it, are even slimmer, and the chance that President Trump will sign it into law approaches √-1. But this is a direct attack on the authority of Speaker Johnson and on President Trump's immigration policy.

The history of the Temporary Protected Status designation for Haitians is a case study in the administrative abuse of a noble idea, giving temporary sanctuary to people suffering from a natural or manmade disaster, and converting it into a shadow immigration stream for fraud and creating welfare recipients. TPS is found in the Immigration Act of 1990 (8 U.S.C. § 1254a).

This saga started on January 21, 2010, when the Obama administration (of course, it was) designated Haiti for TPS following the devastating January 12, 2010, 7.0-magnitude earthquake that killed over 200,000 people. It was supposed to run for 18 months, ending on July 22, 2011.

Repeated extensions kept the program going and the inbound refugee stream intact until July 22, 2017. President Trump gave one extension, through January 22, 2018, to wind the program down. Litigation, however, blocked the program's termination. By the way, that is the pattern you see today and why the left is sniveling at the rapidity with which the Supreme Court is setting aside lower court orders obstructing Trump's immigration agenda. The lawsuits are absolute bull---, I mean nonsense. But they don't have to be sensical. They just have to get in front of a tame judge and buy time until the next election.

Biden extended the program until February 3, 2026. The Trump administration made repeated attempts to terminate Biden's extension but was stymied by various judges (see Federal Judge Once Again Blocks Revocation of TPS Status for Venezuelans, Haitians – RedState and Federal Judge Throws Up Another Roadblock to Prevent Trump From Ending the Biden Parole Program – RedState) who seem to believe that a Republican can't constitutionally change any program created by a Democrat president. Even when the administration was forced to wait until Biden's program expired, a Uruguayan-born, Biden-appointed judge in D.C. ruled it had to remain in place; see Federal Judge Blocks Trump Admin's Termination of TPS Status for Haiti – RedState. The administration pressed its case, and the Supreme Court will hear the case between April 27 and 29, with a decision expected over the summer.

The big argument in favor of extending permanent status to a large body of immigrants that has shown itself unable or unwilling to assimilate seems to be a variation of the "who will do our landscaping?" and "who will pick our tomatoes?" argument. This one is "who will look after the elderly who are being warehoused?"

Revoking the right of Haitian immigrants to remain in the U.S. would deliver a blow to the workforce that cares for America’s seniors, nursing home operators are warning in a case to be heard this month by the U.S. Supreme Court. https://t.co/W6VAIHu5WE

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 14, 2026

“I have one of the largest Haitian populations in the country in my district,” said Rep. Michael Lawler (R-New York), who voted Wednesday push the bill to the House floor. “… If you end [temporary protections] without addressing work authorization, it will cause a huge crisis in our health care system, especially in an area like mine, where a lot of our Haitian TPS holders are nurses.”

There is no good reason anyone should vote to create some 330,000 legal residents who arrived here "temporarily," establish a precedent of making TPS permanent, and supercharge the TPS programs for other Third World crapholes.

Don Bacon is retiring. Fitzpatrick went for Harris by 0.3 points, which makes a primary challenge pretty much the same as giving the seat to the Democrats. The same applies to Mike Lawler, whose district went for Harris by a single point. Salazar (Trump +15), Gimenez (Trump +25), and Malliotakis (Trump +24) should be burned to the ground over this horrible vote.

For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.

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