Democratic Congresswoman Lois Frankel on Monday joined with health care professionals, Haitian families and others to denounce the U.S. Supreme Court decision last month to end Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for Haitians, saying it will hurt the economy of Florida and Palm Beach County.
At a news conference in West Palm Beach, Frankel and others said the high court’s ruling threatens to uproot thousands of Florida residents who have legally established lives in the United States.
"We cannot be a nation that turns our back on those who follow the law, work with dignity, and help build stronger communities," Frankel told reporters.
She said the nation's 350,000 Haitian TPS holders, including 113,000 in Florida, contribute $2.6 billion to our economy and pay more than $300 billion in state and local taxes.
"There 13,000 Haitian TPS workers working as nursing assistants ... caring for roughly 65 patients every single day," Frankel said. "These are our mothers, our fathers, our grandfather, our grandparents, people doing things that nobody else would do.
She said the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association warned that removing Haitian TPS workers without an "adequate transition period would leave a gaping hole in, in the workforce.
READ MORE: PolitiFact FL: Will the end of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians mean a caregiving crisis?
Frankel is urging the public to speak out in support of Haitian TPS holders.
State Sen. Mack Bernard, D-West Palm Beach, said the end of TPS for Haitians is "really, really bad news" for the Florida economy because so many Haitian TPS holders work in construction, agriculture and nursing industries.
Bernard then encouraged Haitian TPS holders to seek out legal advice from qualified lawyers ":so that way you know exactly what to do, because everybody's circumstance is completely different."
Timothy Patrick Keohane, an immigration attorney and Program Administrator for Catholic Charities, Diocese of Palm Beach, echoed Bernard's recommendations.
"It's so important to find the right help," Keohane said. "People are gonna be easy prey for immigration fraud."
"You need to explore options, family petitions, employer petitions, asylum," he said. "Not everybody's gonna have this type of relief, and people are gonna be easy prey to immigration scammers."
In a 6-3 ruling late last month, a majority of the Supreme Court justices voted to allow the Trump administration to end legal protections for migrants fleeing violence and natural disaster in Haiti and Syria through TPS, exposing hundreds of thousands of immigrants to potential deportation.
The decision overturned lower court orders and allows the Department of Homeland Security to swiftly end TPS, a program that protects a total of 1.3 million people from 17 countries. The ruling immediately affected about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians.
Palm Beach County is home to approximately 68,000 Haitian residents, representing one of the largest Haitian communities in the nation. Across the state, an estimated 150,000 individuals are protected under TPS,
making Florida home to the largest TPS population in the entire country.
TPS was created by Congress in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters, civil strife and other instability. It allows people already in the country to stay with work permits in increments of up to 18 months, but it does not provide a path to citizenship.
Haitians were first granted TPS in 2010 after a catastrophic earthquake and extended them multiple times amid ongoing gang violence that has displaced more than a million people, according to court documents.
