First posted on Instagram · @profilopolitics
Representative Laura Gillen, a New York Democrat, said on Friday that the fight to protect Haitian neighbours and pass her bill extending Temporary Protected Status will gain even more momentum now that Democrats have won the majority in Congress, as Democrats announced plans to use their new majority to protect Haitian migrants.
Gillen's bill, H.R. 1689, would direct the Department of Homeland Security to designate Haiti for Temporary Protected Status until January 20, 2029, protecting about 350,000 Haitians living in the United States from deportation and preserving their right to live and work legally. The House passed the bill in April 2026 by a bipartisan vote of 224 to 204, after a discharge petition led by Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts gathered the 218 signatures needed to force a vote over the objections of Republican House leaders.
The bill has been waiting in the Senate ever since. Senators Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware introduced companion legislation in June with the backing of Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and 16 other colleagues, but a request to pass the bill by unanimous consent was blocked in July by a single Republican, Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri. Gillen said at the time that a single senator blocking a bill that had already passed the House on a bipartisan basis was shameful, and that the fight was by no means over.
The protection is at stake because the Department of Homeland Security announced last year that it would terminate Haiti's Temporary Protected Status, effective February 3, 2026, saying conditions in the country had improved. Federal courts temporarily blocked the move, but the Supreme Court allowed the termination to go ahead in June, and the administration carried out its first deportation flight to Haiti in late August. Gillen and other lawmakers say the situation in Haiti is volatile and declining, not improved, pointing to gang violence that killed 2,680 people and displaced 1.3 million Haitians between January and May of last year.
The midterm elections on November 3 changed the balance in Congress. Democrats won the majority in both chambers, taking 250 House seats according to the Associated Press, with 11 races still to be called, and 54 seats in the Senate against 44 for Republicans. Gillen herself won re-election in New York's Fourth District. The new Congress does not take office until January 2027, and even then the bill would still need to pass the Senate — where Democrats hold 54 seats, short of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster — and be signed into law.