The administrative detail is the story, because it is where the scale lives.
Employment authorisation for Haitians under Temporary Protected Status did not have one expiry date. It had twelve, running from July 22, 2017 through February 3, 2026 - the ordinary result of a decade of staggered renewals. USCIS instructed employers completing Form I-9 to enter 'as per court order' in Section 1, and in Section 2, one date: July 27, 2026 [3].
Tonight. Twelve cohorts, collapsed into one. More than 300,000 people are on the far side of that line as of tomorrow morning [1].
What the government is offering them is specific. DHS General Counsel James Percival said last week that 'for those with an expiring TPS designation, these final days provide one last opportunity to accept $2,600 and a free flight home.' A DHS spokesperson put it less formally: 'What we would say now is it's closing time, which means you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here' [1].
The $2,600 is real - it is the self-deportation stipend announced in January, claimed through the CBP Home app - and should not be described as invented. What it does is ask people who were lawfully present through today to enter a programme the department's own announcement framed as being for people who were not.
The destination is where this stops being an argument about immigration policy. Mike DeWine is the Republican governor of Ohio, the state with one of the largest affected populations. His assessment: 'Haiti is a horribly dangerous place... The gangs run most of the country.' He has said deporting long-term residents 'does not do our country any good at all' [2].
Haitians are roughly a quarter of Springfield's population and about 30,000 people across central Ohio, working construction, manufacturing, assembly and healthcare [2].
There is also an arithmetic problem the policy does not resolve. Haiti's migration director has said weekly deportation flights would carry about 250 former TPS grantees [4]. Against 300,000 people, at 250 a week, that is more than twenty years.
Viles Dorsainvil, who directs the Haitian Support Center, described the position plainly: 'The Haitian community is faced with a catch-22 situation' [2].
One caution, and it is the day's genuine open question. This newsroom has not confirmed that the Supreme Court's mandate issued today, or that the D.C. Circuit lifted the injunction; sources conflict on the timing and we are not asserting either [4]. What is documented is the expiry date on the permits, and that date is tonight.
