Haitian community leaders, immigrant rights advocates, and local allies gathered outside Republican U.S. Senator Ashley Moody’s Miami office on Thursday morning to demand she help hundreds of thousands of Haitians whose temporary recently visas expired.
They also announced a billboard campaign — one on I-95 in Miami and the other on the I-4/Selmon Expressway Connector in Tampa — to publicly call on Moody and fellow Republican Sen. Rick Scott to protect Haitian immigrants who recently lost Temporary Protected Status, or TPS.
The demonstration, organized by the Florida Immigrant Coalition and others, comes as Haitian TPS recipients face "the threat of unemployment, detention, deportation, and family separation," according to the advocates.
The rally took place at Moody's Miami office at 9130 S. Dadeland Blvd., and was livestreamed on the Florida Immigrant Coalition's Facebook page.
The Trump administration has been deporting hundreds of Haitian immigrants since winning a legal battle this summer to end TPS for about 350,000 Haitians, including 158,000 in Florida, most of whom live in South Florida.
Activists have warned that Haiti is currently too dangerous and doesn’t have enough resources to help those being deported to a country of nearly 12 million people, of which more than half need humanitarian assistance because of surging gang violence and deepening poverty, hunger and violence.
READ MORE: More than 50 kidnapped as violent gang attack in Haiti leaves 47 dead
Gangs control an estimated 70% of Haiti’s capital and swaths of land in the country’s central region. Gang violence has displaced a record of nearly 1.5 million people across Haiti, where more than 3,050 people were reported killed from January to June, according to the U.N.
The Miami activists say Haitian TPS holders have spent decades in Florida, where they have "lived, worked, paid taxes, raised families, and built communities."
Moody and Scott have expressed empathy toward Haitian TPS holders, but have not outlined any specific policy changes.
Moody told WPLG Local 10 in Miami in late July that she had met with Trump administration officials to talk about reviewing TPS holders' situations on a "case-by-case basis." Scott told ABC News in late July that Congress has "gotta fix the whole system of immigration to help them."
The Miami activists say Moody has failed to step up as families are "pushed into legal uncertainty and placed at risk of deportation."
The advocates say the termination of TPS for so many Haitians is destabilizing local economies, directly impacting the healthcare, hospitality, tourism, and home care industries that rely on them for staff.
The immigration activists are urging Moody to extend TPS to Haitians by supporting S. 4814 in the Senate and to oppose deportations of TPS holders to Haiti.
S. 4814 would reinstate the residency status for Haitians and provide permanent paths for U.S. citizenship. The legislation, however, has stalled in the Senate.
“Ashley Moody cannot claim to represent Florida while abandoning over a hundred thousand Haitian Floridians who have lost their legal protections and are facing the threat of deportation,” said Tessa Petit, Executive Director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition.
“Haitian families are seeing their jobs disappear as deportation flights, filled with hard-working neighbors, friends, and business owners, leave for Haiti," she said. "They are watching their communities live in fear, and they are watching Ashley Moody sit on the sidelines.”
