The Trump administration’s recent decision to end immigration protections for Haitians shocked many in the migrant community, but for Caribbean-U.S.-based journalist Felicia Persaud, it was a predictable outcome driven in part by pro-Trump immigrant voters.

The Department of Homeland Security announced last month that it would be terminating Temporary Protect Status for Haiti, first enacted under the Biden administration due to the ongoing political instability in the Caribbean nation that has endured centuries of exploitation and political meddling from Western nations.

The announcement was made hours after the deadly shooting in Washington, D.C. in which an Afghan migrant was suspected of shooting two National Guard members. The Trump administration also announced that every Green Card Holder from a list of 19 countries “of concern” would be reviewed for possible revocation; all of which, Persaud noted, were non-white majority.

“Whether Trump is threatening Afghans, Haitians, Venezuelans, Iranians, or Somalis, the message is the same: Brown and Black immigrants are the enemy,” she wrote in an analysis published Friday in the St. Kitts Gazette. “White ones are not.”

With the Trump administration’s termination of immigration protections for Haitians, more than 500,000 Haitians in the United States now face deportation when the TPS expires on Feb. 3, 2026. The DHS website encourages Haitian migrants to self-deport, and promises them a “complimentary plane ticket” and a “$1,000 exit bonus.”

While white voters made up a majority of Trump’s supporters in 2024, a significant share of hispanic and migrant communities backed the current president as well, and in unprecedented numbers for a Republican presidential candidate. To those voters specifically, Persaud had a message.

“Sadly, the many immigrants who helped him get elected are the ones whose families will now pay the price,” Persaud wrote.

“I’m referring especially to the Haitians For Trump and the Cubans, Somalians, Venezuelans and other Hispanic immigrants who despite hearing the xenophobic rhetoric for years and seeing it in action in the first administration, voted for him. Meanwhile, the truth is simple, as Jeremy McKinney of the American Immigration Lawyers Association noted: ‘Radicalization and mental illness don’t know nationality.’