Empty pews and fear of ICE on Maryland’s Eastern Shore after TPS ends for Haitians

SALISBURY, Md. — These are harrowing days for the Word of Life Center, a church that for many years has been a vibrant hub of the Haitian community in Maryland’s Eastern Shore region.

SALISBURY, Md. — These are harrowing days for the Word of Life Center, a church that for many years has been a vibrant hub of the Haitian community in Maryland’s Eastern Shore region.

A bridal shower and yard-sale barbeque were canceled. So were English-language classes. The senior pastor of the nondenominational congregation in Salisbury, Roosevelt Toussaint, said attendance at Sunday’s service dropped by more than half. Normally, more than 500 people would have heard his sermon, titled “What to do in a time of crisis.”

The reason for empty seats, Toussaint said, is that many community members are unwilling to venture from their homes, fearing arrests and deportation since the Trump administration moved to end Temporary Protected Status for more than 1 million people from numerous countries. Among those affected: roughly 350,000 Haitians who have been living and working legally in the U.S. for years.

In Salisbury, the Eastern Shore’s biggest city, about 10% of the 33,000 residents are Haitian, many of them employed under TPS as farmworkers, caregivers and in the poultry plants that are the region’s economic backbone.

Like other Haitians losing TPS, they now face an agonizing choice: Try to stay in the U.S. and find underground work, constantly fearful of being caught by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Or return to a nation so overwhelmed by gang violence and poverty that some feel deportation is tantamount to a death sentence.