Who Actually Gets Put on a Plane

Two aircraft landed at Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince on Friday afternoon. One had been chartered by the United States government and flown from Washington-Dulles. The other was Salvadoran, and it came down shortly after midday carrying equipment. Nobody in any government has said what was on the American plane.

That sentence is the whole reason this page is leading with it. By Saturday morning the picture of planes landing in Haiti was already moving around, and a picture like that answers a question people in Springfield and Flatbush and North Miami have been asking since July: has it started again, and is it my turn? So here is what is known, what is not, and what each of several different people in one household should actually do about it this week.

This is not a prediction about you.

What landed, and what nobody will say

The Miami Herald’s Jacqueline Charles reported the arrivals: a U.S.-government-chartered aircraft out of Dulles, then a Salvadoran aircraft about an hour later. Six planes were scheduled in all, three chartered by the U.S. government and three from El Salvador, and the arrivals reported do not establish that all six came down. The flights were first flagged by Jake Johnston, a Haiti researcher at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

They are part of the search for four Salvadoran aviation technicians seized after the Oct. 18 ambush at Santo, in Croix-des-Bouquets — the same ambush this page carried on Oct. 19 and the same search it carried on Oct. 21. The Associated Press reported on Thursday that about 100 Salvadoran special-forces members had arrived, with about 100 more due that evening; the Wall Street Journal on Friday put the number at 200 special-operations soldiers. Those are different counters describing different moments. Do not add them together, and do not read a direction into them.

Now the part that matters more than any of it. No outlet has reported either aircraft as a removal flight. No manifest was released. The State Department did not answer the newspaper’s questions. A suggestion that Marines might be arriving to reinforce the U.S. embassy was floated as a possibility and confirmed by nobody. This page checked the deportation-flight reporting again on Saturday and found no report of a removal flight to Haiti in this window.

That is a finding about the reporting. It is not a promise about the week. Removals to Haiti have been reported on this page repeatedly since July, and they were not announced in advance either. What Friday’s arrivals changed about your status, your case or your court date is nothing at all.

This week: if someone shows you a photograph of a plane and tells you it means your time is up, treat it as a rumour until you have checked your own file. The immigration court’s free automated line, 1-800-898-7180, runs around the clock and will read back your next hearing date and any decision, by A-number. It is in English and Spanish only, and if you have never had a case in immigration court there will be nothing in it for you.

The person who has never been in trouble

There is a belief in a lot of households that a clean record is a kind of protection — that the people being put on planes are the ones who did something. The government’s own data does not support it.

The Migration Policy Institute, a research group in Washington, published an analysis on Thursday finding that the Department of Homeland Security carried out about 980,000 deportations in the first 18 months of this administration. The AP’s Rebecca Santana reported it. And the finding inside it that belongs in every Haitian household is this: most of the people deported have never been convicted of a crime, despite the administration saying it is going after the “worst of the worst.” Earlier data showed the same thing.

Two cautions, because this page would rather be useful than dramatic. These are the group’s own figures, pulled from public data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests — not an agency count. The administration stopped releasing comparable Homeland Security figures in January 2025, and this week put out a figure of its own, 1.2 million “deported or removed,” which the AP says could not immediately be reconciled with the analysis. Two counts, two counters. This page is printing both and reconciling neither.

The 980,000 covers every nationality and carries no breakdown by country. No U.S. agency has published a per-country list for this period, so nothing in it tells you how many Haitians are inside it. It names no Haitian at all. It is here because the people it counts include the removals to Haiti this page has been reporting since July.

This week: stop treating your record as the thing that protects you, and start treating the door as the thing that decides. You do not have to open it. Ask for a warrant signed by a judge — through the window, or under the door — and look for a judge’s signature on it before the door opens. An administrative form that ICE writes for itself is not that. Practise the sentence out loud with whoever else lives in the house, including the teenager, because the person who answers the door is whoever happens to be nearest to it.

The person being told to sign

The same analysis found voluntary departures — where someone gives up their case in immigration court and agrees to leave — at an all-time high: 170,000 since January 2025. The AP reports that advocates and lawyers say people give up the fight and agree to go simply to get out of detention.

That is the number this page worries about most, because it is the one a frightened family can act on in an afternoon and cannot undo. What agreeing to leave does to your ability to come back depends on your own case, and this page is not going to tell you what it is worth. Nobody should be telling you what it is worth except a lawyer who has looked at your papers.

This week: if anyone — an officer, a neighbour, a man with a business card — is pushing you to sign something that ends your case, do not sign it that day. Take the paper, photograph every page, and get it in front of free legal help first. And remember the fee rule: nobody may charge you a fee to sign you up for a protection that does not exist today.

The person who already has a removal order

Most people reading this do not have one, and for them the sentence this page has printed since July still holds exactly: ending TPS is not a judge ordering you personally to leave.

But a minority does have one, often from years ago, sometimes from a case they never knew had finished. For them the honest sentence is different: that order did not go away, and nothing in this week’s news touched it. If that is you, this is the week to see a lawyer — not next month.

This week: find out which one you are instead of assuming. The same free line, 1-800-898-7180, will tell you by A-number whether a judge has decided anything in your case. Write down what it says, with the date you called, and keep that note with your papers.

The person waiting on a piece of paper

Several of this week’s developments are quieter and all point the same way: the paper trail is getting harder to build and more expensive to keep. This page reported on Oct. 23 that ICE destroys mailed records requests unless the person asking is in detention, and what it costs now to file for cancellation of removal. A proposed rule filed on Friday would hold Marketplace savings until an immigration-status check clears, starting with plan year 2028 — nothing changes today, and nobody should drop coverage over it without asking first.

This week: make your own copy of everything before you need it. Photograph both sides of every document, every notice, every letter, and leave one set with someone you trust who is not in the house. Keep a dated note of every call you make and every paper you hand over, because a check-in you cannot prove you made is the part of the record that goes missing.

What has not changed

TPS for Haiti and Syria is where it has been since July 27: terminated. Work permits tied to it ended the same day. None of that moved this week, and nobody should tell you it did.

And losing TPS is still not a deportation order. That sentence has not needed an edit since July, and it did not need one on Friday when the planes came down.

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