FWD.us<\/a>, Haitian Bridge Alliance and the UndocuBlack Network. The numbers reflect data from the 2024 American Community Survey, part of the U.S. Census, but use a population level from early 2025 before the Trump administration began terminating TPS designations.<\/p>\nFLL has been among the harder hit. The airport had 132 employees holding Temporary Protective Status for Haiti as of July 27, airport spokesperson Arlene Satchell, told the Miami Herald. They were not directly employed by Broward County but by third parties.<\/p>\n
Haitians with TPS working at FLL held a variety of roles, and often ones directly impacting the public\u2019s experience, according to Aldo Muirragui, Field Coordinator for Airports in Florida for the union 32BJSEIU. His group represents at least 50 people who lost their jobs.<\/p>\n
Think of when you get on a flight and find your seat pocket with someone else\u2019s chewed gum or an old water bottle? Haitians on TPS rush onto airplanes as soon as they deplane and clean the insides before the next flight. Have you ever traveled with an elderly family member who needed a wheelchair to make it to his or her gate? Haitians on TPS are wheelchair attendants, too.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re also baggage handlers, passenger service agents, security officers and concession workers, according to Muirragui.<\/p>\n
At Miami International Airport, 33 employees had Haitian Temporary Protective Status and were affected. None were employed by Miami-Dade County.<\/p>\n
Hotels are also likely to feel the pain of losing experienced workers, said Wendi Walsh, secretary-treasurer of Unite Here – Local 365, a union that represents hotel and airport workers.<\/p>\n
A 61-year-old Haitian man who has lived in Miami for 17 years has worked as a dishwasher at the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach for five years. In late July, he was no longer allowed to work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt good because I was working hard,\u201d he told the Herald. \u201cI did everything that was asked of me.\u201d And still, that wasn\u2019t good enough.<\/p>\n
Monday through Friday he worked in multiple kitchens in the high-end hotel. Guests would certainly notice if he wasn\u2019t doing a stellar job. Now, he is worried about how he\u2019ll get by financially and ICE, he said. He plans to stay at home and lay low.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow I can\u2019t do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both of those fears, economic and security, run deep among the Haitian workers who lost their jobs and status.<\/p>\n
The former FLL worker has been sharing an apartment in Fort Lauderdale with a church friend but doesn\u2019t know how he\u2019ll keep up with rent or other expenses.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough. The bills don\u2019t care about your status,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s also frightened over his safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t know when ICE is going to get you,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He avoids going into the streets, mostly staying at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re yanking people out of cars,\u201d he says. They\u2019re tying people up.\u201d<\/p>\n
He obtained TPS in 2010 after Haiti\u2019s devastating earthquake. But he\u2019s been left in limbo since. He had a home in Port-au-Prince, but gangs took it over. His son, a police officer in Haiti, watched his partner killed right in front of him.<\/p>\n
He said he\u2019s an immigrant in the U.S. and South Florida because of how dangerous his home country is. He worked hard and played by the rules.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can go to a police station now and see that I have a clean record.\u201d<\/p>\n
Union leaders, meanwhile, have their own concerns. One is that many of the Haitians with TPS who are being let go were among the most experienced workers South Florida airports and hotels had and often took newer colleagues under their wings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are so many experienced people that have been at the airport for decades,\u201d noted Aldo Muirragui, the field coordinator at 32BJSEIU. \u201cIt\u2019s going to take a lot more time to replace the knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n
As an example, he cited several wheelchair attendants who formed relationships with travelers such that they\u2019re always requested by the same people. Additionally, they \u201chave gone through a very stringent process of security and background checks,\u201d the union leader said.<\/p>\n
They have backgrounds as squeaky clean as the halls and floors right after they mopped them.<\/p>\n
Walsh, the Unite Here – Local 365 official, concurs and says that\u2019s also true at hotels.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe impact of this isn\u2019t just on the workers terminated, but the workers left behind,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re terminating employees with lots of experience,\u201d she said while noting that South Florida\u2019s labor pool is shrinking.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll that\u2019s going to do is put pressure on the workers left behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
The local economy will miss the workers\u2019 income, too. According to estimates by Connor, the Princeton research fellow, Haitians on TPS in the tri-county area provided $1.5 billion in annual economic contributions, $174 million in annual federal and payroll taxes and $176 million in annual state and local taxes.<\/p>\n
The former FLL janitor doesn\u2019t eat at restaurants often, said, but spends a good amount on groceries. He likes to cook. He was also hoping to make his apartment a bit nicer this year by doing some renovations. That\u2019s on hold now as are the regular remittances he was sending to his family in Haiti. His local church may suffer, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of my money went to church,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Vinod Sreeharsha<\/a><\/p>\n Miami Herald<\/p>\n
Vinod Sreeharsha covers tourism trends in South Florida for the Miami Herald.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Travelers at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport may not have known his name, but they relied on his work.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":["post-366124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366124","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=366124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}