On Sean and Michelle's living room wall is an enormous painting of a sailboat. The boat is perched on top of a huge wave of blue and white that appears to be ready to collapse around the boat.
The painting might as well represent this moment in time for Sean and Michelle and their immigration journey in America.
On a wall leading into their kitchen hangs a homework assignment by their elementary school-aged child. It is a handwritten note about their summer plans. It includes summer camp, going to the beach and visiting a grandparent. "It's going to be fun. Summer is going to be an awesome time," it concludes.
This, however, could be their last summer in the United States.
Sean and Michelle are among hundreds of thousands of people from Venezuela here legally under Temporary Protected Status, or TPS. The Trump administration is ending the program. The couple's status now expires in September.
TPS allows people already in the United States to live and work legally because their native countries are deemed unsafe for return due to natural disaster or civil strife.
President Donald Trump promised during his campaign to deport millions of people, and in office has sought to dismantle Biden administration policies that expanded paths for migrants to live legally in the U.S.
The Supreme Court last month gave the go-ahead for the Trump administration to strip TPS from an estimated 350,000 Venezuelans that would have expired in April. In doing so, the court put on hold a court order blocking the administration from revoking protections granted under President Joe Biden.
An additional 250,000 Venezuelans, including Sean and Michelle, covered by an earlier TPS designation, are set to lose those protections in September.
They asked WLRN to withhold publication of their full names in fear of retribution from the U.S. and Venezuelan governments, as they have pending immigration cases and face potential deportation.
A rushed arrival
WLRN spoke with Sean and Michelle on a recent weekday afternoon on their patio. A hammock hung next to the pool. Their two short-haired German pointers, Zeus and Horus — named for two mythological Gods — were nearby. Betty the cat was around, but not seen. Boogie the parrot was just inside.
The tranquillity was contrary to the chaos of their migration journey to Florida, a journey that began just days after Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez was declared dead in 2013.
"I was being accused of conspiracy, of being in a plot against government," Sean told WLRN.
He served in the army. Chavez's successor, Nicolás Maduro, had accused U.S. embassy employees of working to destabilize the government. Sean was caught up in it because, he said, he was acquaintances with one of the U.S. embassy workers.
"It was a lie," said Michelle of the conspiracy accusation.
At the time, Michelle was in the U.S. on a student visa. They were married. She quickly returned to Venezuela. Sean was threatened with arrest and told he had 24 hours to leave the country.
"This was one of the situations that you really can call a life or death situation," he said.
They left and flew to Miami. It was the spring of 2013.
"We were holding our hands on the plane," Sean recalled. "We were saying to each other, 'We made it. We made it. We got out. We finally got out.'"
They started their American lives in Miami Beach. Their family tried to talk them out of it, saying it was too expensive, there was too much traffic and too many tourists. But they wanted to live somewhere where they knew they would have to learn English.
Sean got a job washing and cleaning yachts and in July 2013 he filed paperwork with federal immigration authorities requesting political asylum.
"As any other Venezuelan that I know, we believe that our cases are undeniable in some way," Sean said.
Except the data show otherwise. Winning an asylum claim is rare. Only one in eight was granted nationwide in the last fiscal year, according to U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services.
The odds are much worse for asylum claims filed in Miami, which sees more asylum applicants than any other jurisdiction in the nation. In fiscal year 2024, only one out of every 145 asylum applicants were granted permission to stay in the country.
The waiting begins
"Five years go by," said Sean. We waited for the required interview as part of the asylum claims process.
It finally came in 2018, but it was scheduled just days after his mother in-law died in Venezuela. Michelle was pregnant with their first child. She decided not to return to Venezuela for the funeral instead of postponing the process they already had been waiting five years for.
Two years later, they received a reply. Another interview. Sean said he had four interviews.
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By the summer of 2021, it had been eight years since Sean applied for asylum. He and Michelle had become parents. Both were working; Sean started his own business. That’s when an envelope arrived in the mail. It was thick.
"It was a big envelope, so I knew it wasn't good. A notice of approval will be only one page or two," Michelle said.
They had been ordered to face an immigration judge — and forced to make a critical decision: They had to decide if they wanted to go ahead with Sean's asylum claim since the notice is the first step in the deportation process.
Shifting strategy
By this time, they had another option. A few months earlier President Biden had granted Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans. They decided to end Sean's asylum claim and apply for TPS. An immigration judge allowed them to drop the asylum case.
They applied for and were eventually granted a travel permit, allowing them to leave the U.S. and return under TPS, which allows recipients — albeit temporarily — to live and work in the U.S.
So they headed to Texas and the southern border to drive to Mexico and make a U-turn.
"Our first thought was, 'I hope the TPS stays in place because this is the only tool that we have to adjust our status because asylum didn't work," Sean said.
He quickly corrected himself as he recalled the trip. "I'm wrong because the first thought was, 'Thank you, God. Thanks for being so merciful with us and allow us to come back to our home,' because that's how we feel in this country. This is home for us."
They made the U-turn trip in late November 2024. Trump had won the presidential election just a few weeks earlier, promising to deport undocumented immigrants and crackdown on immigration.
The timing was a factor for Sean and Michelle. They wanted to complete the trip before Trump was sworn back into office.
Their future turned to an uncertain one in early February when Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem canceled TPS for Venezuelans. The decision not to renew TPS means it will expire on Sept. 10 for Sean and Michelle — and hundreds of thousands of other Venezuelans, many of whom live in Florida.
"We just have faith because that's the only thing that we can do."Sean
"We got into that mood where all we were doing was worrying about it. We came to the conclusion that there's no way to make plans," Sean said. "We just have faith because that's the only thing that we can do."
"We don't have choices," Michelle said. "We have nowhere to go. We are literally locked in. The only country that we are able to go with an expired passport is our own country — and we cannot go there. So we just have to wait to see what happens."
Their Venezuelan passports expired several years ago and, like many Venezuelans living in the U.S., they've been unable to get them renewed due to strained diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Venezuela.
They have visited the consulates of the Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, Colombia hoping to get an escape plan if they face deportation in a few months and avoid returning to Venezuela, a place Sean called “enemy territory."
One more hope and worry
They have one more option to stay in the U.S. Michelle has been approved to apply for a H-1B visa. It's a temporary visa that allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations.
If that’s granted, they will be able to stay in the U.S. legally for at least another three years. By that time, their child will be finishing elementary school.
But the couple has another worry on their mind having to do with their U.S.-born child: Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship.
Trump wants to deny citizenship to children born to parents in the U.S. without legal status or on temporary visas, like Sean and Michelle. A legal challenge to the president’s executive order is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
If the president is successful, Sean and Michelle's child, who was born in the U.S. and is a citizen, would not be considered a citizen.
In the meantime, Sean and Michelle said they have decided not to try to have another child, at least for now.
