DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said allowing Haitians to stay in the country was against the “national interest.” The Trump administration announced an end to temporary legal protections for Haitian migrants in the United States, leaving hundreds of thousands of people at risk of deportation.

Over half a million people are now at risk of being seized and deported to the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for some 521,000 Haitians living in the U.S. will terminate in September, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said.