By Shevrin Jones
(Source: Election News Hub)
On June 26, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to strip Temporary Protected Status from Haitian immigrants — a decision that will upend the lives of more than 350,000 men, women and children who have lived, worked and raised families in this country. I represent Miami-Dade County in the Florida Senate, home to one of the largest Haitian populations in America, and I see every day what this community contributes. That is why I am and will continue to fight this decision with everything I have, in Congress, in the courts and in the streets.
TPS is not amnesty, and it is not a loophole. Congress created the program in 1990, and every president since — Republican and Democrat alike — has honored it as exactly what it is: a lawful, humanitarian protection for people who cannot safely return to a home country in crisis. Haiti today is in the grip of gang violence, political collapse and the lingering wreckage of natural disaster. The U.S. State Department itself warns Americans not to travel there. Yet this administration insists it is safe enough to send hundreds of thousands of people back. That claim is not just wrong; the evidence shows it was never really about safety at all. Reporting has revealed that the Department of Homeland Security skipped legally required review procedures on the way to this decision, ignoring the very threats its own government agencies had documented. Coupled with a president who has described Haiti as a “filthy, dirty, disgusting” country and accused Haitian immigrants of “poisoning the blood” of America, the pattern is unmistakable: this is a policy built on racial animus toward Black immigrants, dressed up as a technical status change.
The human cost of getting this wrong is almost impossible to overstate. Many of these families have lived in the United States for decades. They followed every rule — registered, renewed on time, passed background checks, paid taxes — and now find themselves in limbo through no fault of their own. Nearly a third of Haitian TPS holders work in health care. They are the nurse’s aides who turn patients every two hours through the night, the home health workers who stay long after their shift ends, the direct-care staff propping up a workforce that is already stretched to its limit. Strip their status and deport them, and it isn’t just those families who suffer — it’s the elderly and disabled Americans who depend on that care, and the health systems that will struggle to replace it.
There is a way to stop this before it does irreparable damage: H.R. 1689, which would extend Haitian TPS through April 20, 2029. It passed the House with bipartisan support, 224–204, and now sits before the Senate. I have written to Senators Rick Scott and Ashley Moody urging them to bring it to a vote without delay. As I told them directly: these families hold our community together while they wait. Our Haitian brothers and sisters deserve better than to be treated as an afterthought in a political fight they didn’t start.
The president speaks of Haitian immigrants as if they are faceless and abstract, as if they are not our neighbors, our coworkers, our caregivers, our family. They are. They show up every day and help this country function. Every Haitian TPS holder facing this uncertain future – the nurses, the construction workers, the parents, the children – deserves to know that their community will not look away. We won’t. This fight is not over, and it will not end with a single court ruling. The Senate has a chance, right now, to do what courts would not: stand up for these families and pass H.R. 1689.
Florida Sen. Shevrin Jones represents District 34 and is currently running for Congress in Florida’s 24th District.
