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It is deadline day for hundreds of thousands of Haitian nationals in the United States, and as South Florida’s Haitian community braces for what comes after their temporary protected status expires, immigration advocates are urging them to take legal steps in an attempt to avoid deportations.
Early Monday afternoon, 7News cameras captured empty streets in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, where over the past week, local leaders have spoken in support of preserving TPS.
But following an appeals court order extending the end of TPS protection until Monday, the Trump administration is reportedly set to ramp up deportations immediately.
The Archbishop of Miami, Thomas Wenski responded to the news on Monday.
“It’s like sending people back to a burning house,” he said, “I always say, ‘Make America great is a worthy goal, but you’re not going to make America great by making America mean.’ And to turn our backs on 350,000 people who are brothers and sisters to us all, who are human beings like us, who are mothers and fathers, children of human beings, turning their backs on them is very mean.”
This development, which has allowed Haitian nationals to live and work in the United States legally, has led to hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in imminent fear that agents with United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement will come to their neighborhoods.
“How I’m going to live? So, for me, it’s a death sentence,” said Farah Larrieux. “I live with anxiety, stress.”
TPS has shielded Haitian immigrants like Larrieux from deportation and provided many with work authorization for decades. Now, after years of legal battles, those protections are over.
Larrieux, who has been working in the United States, calls the move unjust.
“They have a warning, Category 4, for Americans to not go to Haiti, and they are claiming that it is safe for Haitians to go to Haiti,” she said.
Immigration attorneys are urging TPS holders not to panic but to immediately review their individual cases to see whether they may qualify for asylum, family-based status or another form of immigration relief.
“We have to prepare for the worst. We have to prepare for the scenario where 350,000 of our sisters and brothers in our community will fall out of status,” said Paul Namphy, political director of the Family Action Network Movement.
For Haitian nationals, TPS was set to end last week. The last-minute appeals court ruling put a three-day pause on deportations until the cases returned to the same court on Monday.
Haitians were first granted TPS in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
“If those thousands and thousands of TPS recipients are deported back to Haiti, they will return to a nation that is 10 times worse,” said Miami-Dade County District 2 Commissioner Marleine Bastien.
The Trump administration argues TPS was created as a temporary humanitarian program, not a permanent path to legal residency.
But advocates say returning people to Haiti would place them in danger, as the country continues to face gang violence, political instability and a deepening humanitarian crisis.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniela Levine Cava released a statement, writing:
“The termination of temporary protected status for Haitians is a heartbreaking and unnecessary decision. The House acted, the Senate did not.”
“I’m gonna fight for my right to exist,” said Larrieux.
Wenski urged lawmakers in Washington D.C. to pass a bill that extends TPS and safeguards Haitians’ status.
“We’re looking for them to support a bill in the Senate that would embrace the House bill that was passed through a discharge petition, that would give the Hattians a three year extension for their TPS,” he said.
Wenski and other cardinals are set to fly to Washington D.C. to meet senators on Tuesday in an effort to get the legislation passed.
