A deportation flight that Haitian officials initially expected to carry 71 people instead arrived Thursday night with 82 deportees aboard; its manifest had grown at the last minute to an expected 98, landing in Cap-Haïtien at 7:05 p.m. after sunset amid heavy rain — nearly seven hours behind schedule. Global X Flight 6122 had been due to touch down at 12:22 p.m., but last-minute additions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement pushed the plane's departure from Opa-locka Executive Airport in South Florida to 5:10 p.m., after it had first left Alexandria, Louisiana, at 7:34 a.m.
Manifest Grows by Dozens at Last Minute
ICE added more than two dozen additional detainees to the manifest at the last minute on Thursday, according to the Miami Herald, raising the flight's expected roster well beyond what Haiti's Office of National Migration had prepared to receive. The agency, led by director general Jean Négot Bonheur Delva, had mobilized staff as of 8 a.m. to prepare for the arrival of returning nationals, working within its normal 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. hours and planning to receive the aircraft no later than 1 or 2 p.m. Instead, the office was unable to fully process the deportees once the flight finally landed, and the newspaper's report notes the sudden manifest growth strained Haiti's limited budget.
Some of those aboard had been detained only days before being placed on the plane, and the flight included U.S.-born children traveling with deported parents. A mother with what appeared to be a newborn baby was expected to be among the passengers but was not included in the official tally of 82 people placed on the flight. Another deportee had medical issues, and a former senior Haitian government official was sent back without two cell phones that had been held during detention, the outlet reported. Deportees also complained about missing money after their ICE detentions, according to immigrant advocates cited in the same account.
Shackled More Than 13 Hours
Deported migrants spent more than 13 hours in shackles, not counting flying time, before touching down in a country still facing gang violence that has displaced 1.5 million people. Once on the ground, Haitian police screened the arriving deportees to determine whether any were wanted, while officials welcomed the group with a band, a rendition of the Haitian anthem “Ayiti Chérie,” hot meals and identity documents. The Office of National Migration planned to finish registering the returnees on Friday and said it intended to increase per-deportee assistance to $200 — though it could not provide that higher stipend or lodging once the manifest surged, the Herald reported. Detainees instead received about $80 after returning.
Thursday's flight was the fourth deportation since the Department of Homeland Security increased flight frequency from once a month to once a week, part of an escalation that followed the first post-TPS deportation flight, which Hoodline previously reported carried 161 people into Cap-Haïtien on August 20. DHS did not respond to the Herald's request for comment on Thursday's flight, though the agency has since begun highlighting deportees with criminal records on its manifests following the newspaper's reporting. The Bahamas separately deported a group of Haitians two days before Thursday's flight without notifying Haitian officials in advance, according to the same report.
Advocates Call the System Broken
Savi Arvey, director of policy for refugee and immigrant rights at Human Rights First, said returning people — including families and children — must navigate to safety in darkness amid extreme instability and insecurity. Human-rights advocates broadly called the deportation reception situation unacceptable, and Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, condemned the administration's decision to end deportation protections for Haitians under Temporary Protected Status while calling for a moratorium on deportations altogether.
Returning haitians face lodging difficulties and dangerous travel through gang-controlled roads once they leave the airport, and some deportees arrived without any personal belongings at all. Reception is complicated further by lodging needs and the need to cross roads controlled by armed gangs. Flights land in Cap-Haïtien rather than the capital because the FAA has extended its ban on U.S. commercial flights to Port-au-Prince through March 2, 2026, a restriction imposed after gunmen shot at a Spirit Airlines flight in November 2025, as reported by AP News. The U.S. State Department has maintained a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for Haiti as of July 10, 2026, citing states of emergency, kidnapping and civil unrest.
The Legal Path That Opened the Floodgates
The deportation flights follow the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Mullin v. Doe, which cleared the way for the administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status for more than 300,000 Haitians living in the United States. The 6–3 decision found that federal immigration law forecloses judicial review of non-constitutional challenges to TPS terminations, ending a series of lower-court stays that had temporarily blocked removals. The status of any related Haitian TPS legislation was not established in the sources reviewed.
Nationally, deportation flights have returned hundreds of Haitians to a volatile country, part of a broader surge that saw ICE arrests reach a record 49,571 in July, as Hoodline reported last month. The pattern extends well beyond U.S. removals: United Nations humanitarian officials reported that nearly 200,000 Haitians were forcibly returned to the country from abroad during the first eight months of 2026, a 10 percent increase over the same period in 2025, according to UN News.
