While campaigning in North Carolina, Republican vice presidential candidate and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance falsely accused Vice President Kamala Harris of illegally allowing Haitians to stay in the United States.
“She waved a magic wand with two programs and said we’re not going to deport people who are here,” Vance said. “If Kamala Harris waved a magic wand over illegality and said these people are here legally, I’m still going to call them illegal immigrants.”
The statement intensified a controversy over Haitians living in Ohio, after former President Donald Trump baselessly said they ate a neighbor’s pets.
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Here’s why Vance’s claims are untrue.
He was referring to the “Temporary Protected Status” designation given by the Department of Homeland Security to hundreds of thousands of Haitians, allowing them to remain in the United States temporarily because of dangerous unrest in their home country.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced updates to the program for Haitians in July 2021.
“The Biden-Harris Administration and the Department of Homeland Security are committed to supporting the people of Haiti,” Mayorkas said at the time.
President Trump opposes temporary protected status for Haitians, but other Republicans, including Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, have supported it in the past.
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The second program Vance mentioned is known as humanitarian parole, which allows a limited number of Haitians to stay in the U.S. for two years if they have a financial backer and pass background checks.
It’s part of a homeland security agreement with Mexico that also cuts the number of asylum seekers from Haiti allowed at the southwest border.
Both Temporary Protected Status and Humanitarian Parole originate from laws approved by Congress in 1990 that allow executive branch agencies to allow aliens to remain in the United States temporarily for humanitarian reasons.
