The Supreme Court Just Deported Your Grandmother’s Nurse
Today the Supreme Court, on a 6-3 vote along ideological lines, ruled that the Trump administration can strip Temporary Protected Status from more than 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians — clearing the way for their deportation. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that under the TPS law, the president has unreviewable authority to end the program, without intervention from the courts. WikipediaBallotpedia
Unreviewable. That word deserves a moment. The administration terminated a program established by Congress in 1990 for people fleeing war, earthquakes, and gang-controlled failed states — and the Supreme Court’s six Republican-appointed justices have now said no court can second-guess that decision. The president can do this. Full stop.
In a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Sotomayor and Brown Jackson, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the plaintiffs “deserve better than today’s decision.” Jezebel
They do. So do Florida’s elderly. So do the residents of every nursing home in South Florida who has no idea that the person who woke up at 2 AM to answer their call bell may soon be gone.
The Hypocrisy Is the Policy
The U.S. State Department currently maintains a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for Haiti — the highest possible warning — due to gang violence, kidnapping, and dangerous conditions. Yet the Department of Homeland Security simultaneously maintains that Haiti is safe enough to deport 350,000 Haitians back to. Wikipedia
“It shows the hypocrisy and the cruelty and the double standards of the same folks who are saying to U.S. citizens, ‘Haiti is not safe,’ while these same folks are saying Haiti is safe enough to deport Haitian immigrants,” said Paul Christian Namphy of the Family Action Network Movement. Wikipedia
A lower court had already found that the decision to terminate Haiti’s TPS was likely motivated by racial animus, citing Trump’s statement that Haiti is a “shithole country” and his 2024 campaign amplification of baseless claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating residents’ pets. The Supreme Court acknowledged all of this and shrugged. Justice Alito wrote that the administration had offered a “strong, race-neutral explanation”: it simply opposes the TPS program. Wikipedia
They oppose it. That’s the explanation. The racial animus is irrelevant because the administration hates the program itself. Problem solved.
Florida’s Nursing Homes. Florida’s Elderly. Florida’s Crisis.
Here is what this ruling means on the ground, in the state that Ron DeSantis built.
Florida is home to the largest Haitian population in the United States. About 158,000 Haitians — nearly half of all Haitian TPS recipients nationally — live and work in Florida. The state ranks last in the country when it comes to the availability of home health and personal care aides, and continues to deal with a chronic staffing shortage in nursing homes. BallotpediaBallotpedia
In South Florida nursing homes, a majority of certified nursing assistants are Haitian, and roughly half of those are TPS recipients. They do the work that, as one nursing home director put it, most Americans simply will not do. “They put the patient in the bed, feed them, clothe them, give them snacks, comb their hair, change them, turn them every two hours. It’s not an easy job,” said Amina Dubuisson, a past president of the Haitian American Nurses Association. BallotpediaTAI News
At Miami Jewish Health, one of the region’s largest elder care facilities, CEO Jeffrey Freimark said his facility stands to lose 37 employees who are on TPS. “Devastating on many levels, first of all, I think it is morally and ethically reprehensible,” Freimark said. “I have the utmost respect for our caregivers, they are the ones that make this organization work, they are the ones answering that call bell at 2 a.m.; these folks are wired in such a way that they are here to care.” TAI News
At Sinai Residences in Boca Raton, 40 Haitian TPS holders care for roughly 500 older adult residents. CEO Rachel Blumberg has already spent $600,000 on wages, signing bonuses, and training new employees in anticipation of the crisis. “There is a significant financial impact to our community,” she said. “Unfortunately, that gets passed on to the seniors.” Ballotpedia
One 91-year-old Florida resident named Marion Marker, who relies on a Haitian TPS worker for her care, put it simply: “I feel strongly that the people that are here, if we didn’t have them, who would we have? If I were younger, I would go out and protest.” TAI News
Immigrants make up more than 18% of the nation’s 15.2 million healthcare workers and nearly 30% of the direct care workforce in long-term care settings. The Department of Health and Human Services projects demand for nursing assistants will grow by 44% between 2023 and 2038. The administration is deporting the very people filling that gap. NBC News
Congress Could Act. But Won’t.
TPS was created by Congress in 1990. Congress can restore it, extend it, and codify it beyond the reach of any president’s whim. After the ruling, a UCLA law professor who argued on behalf of the Syrian immigrants urged Congress to act: “Today the Supreme Court allowed the government to ignore a bedrock humanitarian protection that Congress, in bipartisan fashion, established three decades ago to ensure that vulnerable refugees would not be subject to partisan whims.” Wikipedia
An effort to extend TPS protections for Haitians has been making its way through Congress. After a discharge petition secured a majority of votes in the House, a bill restoring TPS is headed to a floor vote. Ballotpedia
The Senate is another matter. A Republican Senate that has spent 18 months rubber-stamping every cruelty this administration has produced is not going to save 350,000 Haitians from deportation to a country the State Department says is too dangerous to visit. Not when the base cheers the deportations. Not when the votes aren’t there. Not when the political cost of helping is calculated as higher than the political cost of watching a Florida nursing home collapse.
Selene Panther of the Everglades Division has been filing reports on this for months. The rest of the Everglades Division has been watching. The swamp knows what Florida is about to lose — not because these workers are abstract policy statistics, but because Florida’s elderly have met them. They know their names. They know their stories.
R., a Haitian TPS worker in Sumter County who cares for a 91-year-old woman, hasn’t seen her own son in 11 years. He was seven when she left Haiti. He is now 18. “My son sometimes cry and say he miss me,” she said. She tells him she can’t go back because she has to keep working to support her family. Returning could put her at risk of gang extortion. When she left Haiti, she didn’t know it would be for this long. Ballotpedia
Today the Supreme Court said it can be permanent. Today six justices said the president’s authority to send her back is unreviewable.
Florida’s nursing homes knew this was coming. Florida’s elderly patients knew this was coming. They are the ones who will feel it first, in the empty chairs and unanswered call bells.
And the Florida politicians who cheered for this — who built the culture that made it possible, who made “send them back” a campaign slogan and a governance philosophy — will not be in those nursing homes when the shifts go unfilled.
Their own parents might be.