Story highlights Peniel Joseph: President Trump should intervene immediately to reverse controversial decision to end protected status for Haiti

Ending TPS for Haitians sends a chilling message to the over 400,000 immigrants living in the US under this status, he writes

Peniel Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor of history. He is the author of several books, most recently "Stokely: A Life." The views expressed here are his.

(CNN) The Trump administration's decision to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti, originally granted through a humanitarian program begun under the administration of Republican President George Herbert Walker Bush in 1990, is morally reprehensible. Almost 60,000 Haitians relocated to the United States in the aftermath of 2010's devastating earthquake -- a natural disaster that left thousands dead, and crippled the island's transportation and material infrastructure. Now the Department of Homeland Security has ordered that they have to leave by July 2019 (or else face deportation if they do not, as John Kelly suggested in May, find another way to apply to stay in the United States).

Peniel Joseph

The Haitians now facing threat of expulsion are some of the hardest working, loyal, and decent people our nation has. I write these words as both a historian and a proud Haitian-American whose mother taught me to revere America for offering boundless opportunities.

This decision is bad politics and worse policy, since 30,000 children, who are American citizens, have been born in the ensuing seven years and thus are being asked to leave the only country they have ever known.

President Trump should intervene immediately to reverse this controversial decision. Mr. Trump recently displayed at least a modest willingness to reconsider unpopular policy changes. After an uproar over the announcement that the United States would allow the importing of elephant trophies hunted from Africa, the President, in an apparent change of heart, decided to put the decision on hold for further review. The scourge of big game elephant hunting, while serious, surely should not outweigh the value of the lives of so many Haitian families whose fates have been displaced by a disaster from which their country is still recovering.

Ending TPS for Haitians sends a chilling message to the over 400,000 immigrants from multiple nations living in the United States under this status. Perniciously, it dovetails with Mr. Trump's harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric, which buoyed his candidacy during the presidential election season and has been a feature of controversial executive order restrictions that continue to be litigated in the courts

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