The Donald Trump administration is on its way to deporting a group of lawful permanent residents, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday. The decision came after certain green card holders joined forces with gang leaders linked to Viv Ansanm, the armed alliance formed in September 2023.
According to the United Nations, the coalition of gangs “launched coordinated attacks on critical infrastructure in Haiti, including prisons, government buildings, and Haiti’s main airport in Port-au-Prince as part of a campaign that, among other things, forced the resignation of former Haitian prime minister Ariel Henry.” The Trump government declared it a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in May 2025.
Certain lawful permanent residents to be deported from the US
“The United States will not allow individuals to enjoy the benefits of legal status in our country while they are facilitating the actions of violent organizations or supporting criminal terrorist organizations,” Rubio said in a press release published on the official State Department website. The Department of Homeland Security will be pursuing the removal of these green card holder under section 237(a)(4)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Haitians vs Trump admin
A UN High Commissioner for Human Right report has also established that almost 5,000 people have been killed in Haiti between October 2024 and June 2025. In light of the surging violence in Haiti, international response continues to counter gang conflict. The United States, on the other hand, along with other neighbouring nations, has now maintained a streak of deporting migrants back to the country even though the UN has urged the US to hit the brakes on the practice.
Trump has repeatedly targeted Haitians, a exhibit of which left shockwaves during his 2024 presidential campaign, as he inaccurately claimed that these foreign nationals in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets. Earlier this month, a federal judge flipped the conversation by blocking his administration’s attempt to revoke the Temporary Protected Status of over half a million Haitians.
Haitian citizen arrested in the US
In addition to the certain individuals already being on track to be deported, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a press release Monday, saying that Homeland Security Investigations arrested a lawful permanent resident of the US and a Haitian citizen named Pierre Reginald Boulos.
Officials have accused him “for violating the Immigration and Nationality Act contributing to the destabilizsation of Haiti.” The official release also determined that Boulos failed to disclose his “involvement in the formation of a political party in Haiti, Mouvement pour la Transformation et la Valorisation d’Haiti, and that he was referred for prosecution by the Haitian government’s Unit for the Fight Against Corruption for misusing loans, supporting an additional ground of removability based on this fraud” in his application to become a permanent resident.
He is currently being held in ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations detention.