Enjyvely Senatus said his father’s Georgia restaurant has seen a major decline in business in the weeks since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants.
“Both deliveries and walk-ins have been pretty much cut in half,” Senatus said.
His father opened Manje Lakay Haitian Restaurant about 18 months ago in a Decatur shopping plaza on Covington Highway. For most of that time, the majority of the customers would stop by on their lunch breaks or to pick-up dinner on the way home from work.
“Now less people are out in general, and more tend to cook food at their house,” Senatus said. “A lot of people also had their jobs cut and now they don’t have the money to be out eating.”
On average, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel were arresting around 10 Haitian citizens living in Georgia each month for the first seven months of the year. That’s according to records collected by The Deportation Data Project, which only has numbers through July 2026.
Community leaders say they’ve noticed a significant increase in the number of Haitian people arrested by ICE since the end of June. Metro Atlanta is home to the fifth-largest Haitian population in the country.
For more than 15 years, TPS has allowed for thousands of Haitians living in Georgia to obtain work authorization and live freely without the fear of deportation that many other immigrant groups face.
Haitians were first given Temporary Protected Status in 2010 after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake caused massive devastation that left over a million people homeless. The Department of Homeland Security has extended that status more than five times since then because of ongoing political and economic instability in Haiti.
“Quite a few people, their homes were destroyed by the earthquake in 2010, so they have nothing really to go back to,” the Rev. Jean Billy Beaufils, president of the Georgia Haitian Leadership Coalition, told Capital B Atlanta.
In late August, however, the U.S. began deporting people back to Haiti, undeterred by the armed gangs that control large areas of the country — including in and around the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Since the Supreme Court’s TPS decision, Beaufils and other leaders with the Haitian Evangelical Clergy of Georgia have expanded their local network and begun connecting with organizations based in Haiti that can assist people who’ve been deported when they arrive.
“We have seen more and more leaders come to put their heads together because almost every church in Atlanta and around the metro has someone or a family impacted by the TPS decision,” Beaufils said.
One of the many metro Atlanta churches Beaufils works with is Good Samaritan Haitian Alliance Church in Gwinnett County.
Over the past 30 years, the Lawrenceville church has grown to become one of the largest Haitian congregations in metro Atlanta and a lifeline for families who are new to the country. The church’s response ministries team, led by the Rev. Mardochee Pardieu, helps immigrants and their families find housing an employment, learn English and computer skills, and access healthcare.
As the church’s pastor of ministries, Pardieu also provides spiritual guidance. He said Haitian immigrants are often targeted for inhumane treatment and name calling.
Last week Pierre Damas Bel, a 20-year-old Haitian college student living in Springfield, Ohio, died by suicide after being bullied about the ankle monitor he’d been made to wear by federal immigration officials. Two years ago, false claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were stealing and eating household pets went viral online with the help of JD Vance, then the Republican vice presidential nominee.
According to Senatus, having an ankle monitor is the worst possible scenario for some people.
“People who left before 2010 and before things got bad after the earthquake are more afraid of the ankle monitor and would rather be deported,” he said.
Between January 2025 and August 2026, the number of immigrants wearing ankle monitors under ICE’s electronic surveillance program more than tripled.
“Daily we receive the news that so and so has been in court or in an ICE appointment and they are being braceleted,” Pardieu said. “We inspire them with hope that strengthens their spirit so they can face this hostile environment.”
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