In two important votes this week, several House Republicans broke with the party and President Trump to join the Democrats in providing amnesty to approximately 350,000 Haitian immigrants. Democrats used a procedural vote to bypass House leadership and bring HR 1689 to the House floor.
They were able to win the procedural vote with the defections of six Republicans and pass HR 1689 in the House with ten Republicans supporting it. Now, the bill is headed to the Senate, where if it passes, only the President’s veto would stop it from becoming law.
HR 1689 provides amnesty to Haitians by extending their Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a benefit which was granted to Haitians after an earthquake back in 2010. TPS allows foreign nationals to remain in the US without becoming citizens or being deported, and is reserved for countries experiencing catastrophes whose residents need somewhere to reside until the crisis is resolved.
However, in practice, Congress has managed to take the “temporary” out of “temporary protected status” by extending it years after the reason for granting it was relevant. In this way TPS keeps being extended indefinitely and has become a vessel for providing amnesty to illegal immigrants without the American people being aware of it.
Some important context is that the Trump administration announced back in November of 2025 that they were going to let the 350,000 Haitians’ TPS expire and even pay them to return to Haiti. This status was not retained for any legitimate need. Open border politicians granted it for cheap political gain. The Trump administration has maintained that Haitians have no reasonable basis to receive this emergency measure.
Unsurprisingly, the Republican representatives voting for this include Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), who have been pushing to grant amnesty to nearly all illegal aliens through the DIGNIDAD Act. These lawmakers do not care about the welfare of American citizens— they are looking out for the wellbeing of foreign nationals who entered our nation illegally, exploit welfare programs, and undercut American workers.
Texans for Strong Borders calls on the U.S. Senate to block the passage of this anti-American measure and any other effort to grant amnesty to opportunists seeking to exploit this country. Defending American sovereignty doesn’t stop at the physical border. It means aggressively holding accountable every single person who games the system with loopholes to snatch benefits they don’t deserve.