“I would be separated from my young son if I had to leave this country,” said one Haitian TPS holder. “Leaving with him is not even an option”
The Trump administration and its Congressional allies have made it clear: hundreds of thousands of documented immigrants are set to be stripped of their legal status and deported. Right now, they are living in total uncertainty about their jobs, homes, and whether their families will be ripped apart or forced out of the country entirely. On June 25, the Supreme Court issued a decision allowing the administration to continue with its predetermined decision to end the legal status for an estimated 350,000 Haitian and 6,000 Syrian immigrants.
MIXED-STATUS FAMILIES FACE SEPARATION: ‘I’M HURTING FOR MY LOVED ONES’
Many of these contributors – like Harlaine, a nurse who asked to be identified only by her first name – have held TPS for well over a decade. Since arriving here from Haiti at just five and gaining TPS after a devastating earthquake hit the island in 2010, she’s put herself through school, worked the frontlines during the pandemic, and continues to save lives in cancer care. Last year, she welcomed a U.S. citizen child. Her entire world is here.
So when she found out that the high court had issued a 6-3 ruling that will allow the federal government to unjustly revoke her legal status and take away her ability to continue living and working in the United States, she became grief-stricken and stayed in bed for the whole day. “I’m hurting for my loved ones, for so many other people. I’m mourning for them, and I’m scared for them,” she told KQED.
But she’s especially worried about her baby. “If Harlaine is forced to leave, she fears she’ll lose him,” the report said. “My issue is separation. I would be separated from my young son if I had to leave this country,” she continued. “Leaving with him is not even an option.”
Remember: the same administration that has claimed it’s safe for Harlaine to return to Haiti has issued the highest level travel alert urging Americans to stay away. “Crimes involving firearms are common in Haiti. They include robbery, carjackings, sexual assault, and kidnappings for ransom,” the State Department said in an April advisory. “Do not travel to Haiti for any reason.”
The double-speak is reprehensible. If it’s unsafe for Harlaine’s American citizen child, it’s unsafe for Harlaine as well.
HOSPITALS, NURSING HOMES FACE DEVASTATING LOSS OF WORKERS: ‘VERY UPSETTING FOR THE SENIORS I KNOW’
The fact is that the fallout from the Supreme Court’s unjust decision will extend far beyond the walls of Harlaine’s home. More than 100,000 Haitian immigrants work as health and home care workers alone, and emergency rooms, senior care facilities, and patients will be left facing a crisis should they lose thousands of skilled and dedicated essential workers en masse within a matter of just a few days. Per the USCIS website, Employment Authorization Documents for essential workers are set to expire July 10.
“Rita Siebenaler, a resident of Goodwin House Bailey’s Crossroads in Virginia, called the [Supreme Court’s] decision “sad, dreadful, and very upsetting for the seniors that I know,’” The Washington Post reported. “‘We are now threatened with the loss of valuable, trained, vetted, very, very reliable caretakers,’ she said on a call with reporters hosted by the American Business Immigration Coalition Action.”
In Massachusetts, the loss of nursing home aides alone is “going to be a disaster, Steffie Woolhandler, a professor of health policy at City University of New York at Hunter College, told NPR. The commonwealth is home to the third-largest Haitian TPS population in the U.S. “It’s going to be a disaster in the Boston area, where a lot of our nursing home and home care aides are Haitian,” she said. “If the United States becomes inhospitable to noncitizens, which I think Trump is doing, we’re going to have a lot of problems staffing our entire healthcare system.”
U.S. ECONOMY STANDS TO LOSE BILLIONS IN TAX REVENUE
To her point, our entire country will feel pain under the administration’s unprecedented mass delegalization campaign. Not only will communities lose valued neighbors, our economy stands to lose the estimated $5.9 billion that Haitian workers and consumers contribute annually, including $805 million in federal and payroll taxes and $755 million in state and local taxes. While Syrian TPS holders number just 3,860, their labor force contributes an estimated $100 million annually to our economy.
Far from carrying out its duty as a constitutional check on the executive branch, the conservative faction of the Supreme Court has appeared to ignore key evidence in order to give the administration more room to turbocharge this mass delegalization campaign that has also targeted DACA recipients, refugees, and individuals with humanitarian parole. Another recent Supreme Court decision has also allowed the administration’s border agents to turn asylum-seekers back to certain danger.
10,000 ARRESTS IN JUST FIVE DAYS
Even before this pair of devastating court decisions continuing to take a sledgehammer to our country’s distinct status as a nation of immigrants, ICE has already been dramatically escalating its mass deportation tactics.
Last month, ICE abducted more than 10,000 people in the span of just five days. For context, daily numbers have roughly doubled from about 1,000 a day earlier this year. Federal officials told The New York Times the directive came straight from the White House, which demanded higher arrest numbers. To hit those completely arbitrary quotas, agents have been focusing their efforts on picking people up at routine immigration check-ins – you know, people just trying to follow the rules – over the kind of high-profile raids that have drawn mass public outrage.
Some of the administration’s allies in Congress have managed to state the obvious, saying that deporting Haitian contributors back to certain danger would be a huge mistake. “I mean, that’s the reason why TPS was established to begin with, just like with Venezuelans,” said U.S Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL). His state is home to the largest Haitian TPS population in the nation. He added, “If Venezuelans lose their TPS status — which they have, too — we should reinstate that because of the devastation caused by these earthquakes that happened last week.”
But when Giménez had the opportunity to make a real difference, he instead sided with the administration’s mass deportation apparatus, last month voting to hand over another $70 billion in taxpayer funds to ICE and CBP – and without any of the necessary oversight and accountability needed.
REAL COURAGE IS NEEDED
“An additional $70 billion in funding for masked agents and brutality in our neighborhoods with little to no accountability is a travesty for American families who are trying to make ends meet,” America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas said following the bill’s House passage. Long-settled contributors like Harlaine now stand to be targeted thanks in part to that vote. If Giménez and his colleagues truly care, they should act legislatively to prevent what advocates are calling an “impending tragedy.”
