{"id":140219,"date":"2026-02-02T02:45:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T02:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/140219\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T02:45:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T02:45:25","slug":"miami-mayor-higgins-warns-of-fear-and-terror-as-tps-deadline-looms-for-thousands-of-haitians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/140219\/","title":{"rendered":"Miami Mayor Higgins warns of “fear and terror” as TPS deadline looms for thousands of Haitians"},"content":{"rendered":"

City of Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins<\/a> issued a warning regarding the impact of federal immigration enforcement and the looming expiration of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for thousands of South Floridians.<\/p>\n

Speaking as part of a bipartisan panel of mayors on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan<\/a>” on CBS News Sunday, Higgins described a climate of “fear and terror<\/a>” gripping her city<\/a>. Sunday’s panel included Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt and Mayor Mark Freeman of Mesa, Arizona, reflecting a spectrum of city leaders who are grappling with the national immigration debate.<\/p>\n

She specifically highlighted a “lack of humanity” in current enforcement tactics and warned that local health care systems are on the brink of a crisis.<\/p>\n

A community in hiding<\/p>\n

While responding to Brennan’s questions regarding the 7% of Florida’s population that is undocumented, Higgins acknowledged that while the city currently complies with state-mandated cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), she is limiting that involvement to the bare minimum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“We are going to comply with the law, but we are not going to help beyond that,” Higgins said. “ICE and its tactics have been in my community for over a year… causing great fear and terror in our residents.”<\/p>\n

She noted that the aggressive enforcement has driven residents into hiding, with families reporting disappearances of loved ones and children being pulled out of school.<\/p>\n

The midnight deadline for Haitian Americans<\/p>\n

The most immediate concern, Higgins said, is the expiration of TPS for South Florida’s Haitian community<\/a>, which is scheduled for Tuesday at midnight. She emphasized that the loss of legal status for these individuals isn’t just a humanitarian crisis, but an economic one as well.<\/p>\n

According to Higgins, approximately 15% of the local population holds TPS<\/a> and 20% of Haitian TPS recipients work in the health care sector, bringing great risk to nursing homes, home health care services, hospitals and physician clinics.<\/p>\n

“On Wednesday, we’re talking about nursing homes, home health care aides, hospitals… all of them are going to be out of a job when they wake up on Wednesday morning because their legal pathway and status is going to be revoked,” she said.<\/p>\n

Call for executive action<\/p>\n

Higgins called on the federal government to immediately extend TPS<\/a> for both Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants, saying that the status of many Venezuelans was “erased with the stroke of a pen.”<\/p>\n

“Haiti is not safe, Venezuela is not safe,” she said. “Our economy is at stake and our humanity is at stake.”<\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City of Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins issued a warning regarding the impact of federal immigration enforcement and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[8367,6584,1841,123,125,124,807,38339,4945,3806,4390],"class_list":{"0":"post-140219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami","8":"tag-haiti","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-immigration","11":"tag-miami","12":"tag-miami-headlines","13":"tag-miami-news","14":"tag-south-florida","15":"tag-temporary-protection-status","16":"tag-trump-administration","17":"tag-u-s-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","18":"tag-venezuela"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}