Campaign Action
An estimated 200 demonstrators marched on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort (not the Winter White House) in protest of the administration’s cruel decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 50,000 Haitians currently living in the U.S. An estimated 24,000 Haitians live in South Florida, and ending humanitarian protections for them will mean deporting families back to unsafe conditions:
Marchers gathered at the intersection of Southern Boulevard and Washington Road in downtown West Palm Beach, walked east over the bridge to cross the Intracoastal Waterway and into Palm Beach, where they were stopped by the police.
Signs carried by demonstrators included various messages, including “Immigrants make South Florida work,” “Honk for TPS” and “Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere.”
Rachel Gumpert, one of the rally organizers and a spokeswoman for the labor union Unite Here, said many of the service workers in the union have temporary protected status. “In many cases, they have been here for over two decades,” she said. “Not only can their country of origin not absorb them, but they have good union jobs, and deep roots here. They are paying taxes, buying houses. This is their home.”
The administration has now given TPS recipients until July 2019 to sort out their immigration status or leave. “We all know that Haiti is not ready to absorb so many of its children,” said Gepsie Metellus, executive director of Sant La, the Haitian Neighborhood Center in Miami. “This is a sad day, a very shameful day, a depressing day especially on a Thanksgiving eve where a nation of immigrants would be rebuking immigrants.”
According to a recent study by the Center for Migration Studies, Haitian TPS recipients have been here an average of 13 years, over 80 percent are employed, have mortgages, and are parents to 27,000 U.S. citizen kids. If the administration upends parents, it will also mean upending American children and entire families. In total, over 300,000 people from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, and Nicaragua have TPS:
Immigrants from other countries are worried they’re next.
“Our concern is we are going to be next like Haiti,” Belinda Osorio said.
Osorio is from Honduras and has been in the United States for 26 years under protected status.
She lives in Orlando and is a housekeeper at Walt Disney World.
“Why do they want to send us back, when we are providing for this country,” Osorio said.
TPS recipients and their advocates now hope that the added pressure and urgency will force Congress to act on bipartisan legislation that has been introduced to protect these families. In a press conference in front of the Miami-Dade School Board, Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson said that “this announcement will just give us more fight power … we will continue to advocate”:
TPS recipient Elizabeth Fabien, 31, a businesswoman who splits her time between Pembroke Pines and Orlando, said, “The reaction has been positive in the sense that it is an extension. Now we have to take advantage of the time to do what’s necessary to better our position .
“Or we will have to leave,” she said.
Fabien has been South Florida, first as a student, since she was 18. “I grew up here,” she said. “I have only been back to Haiti once in 13 years.”
“This is not the time to send all these people back to Haiti. We know that situation is not getting better,” said Farah Larrieux, an activist who has lived in the U.S. for 13 years now. She urged outraged Americans to use this as “an opportunity to put pressure on Congress to find a pathway to citizenship. They have to act now.”