Ending temporary residency protections for Haitians would be “sending people into a burning building,” Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami said.
This week the Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to strip legal protections from Haitians living in the United States with temporary protected status (TPS).
TPS provides hundreds of thousands of eligible Haitians in the U.S. with protection from deportation and work authorization, due to ongoing safety concerns in Haiti. The Justice Department requested the court to lift a judge’s Feb. 2 decision that blocked the Trump administration from ending TPS that was granted in 2010.
“I would hope that the court does not support the Trump initiative at this time because this would create tremendous pain … both with the Haitians affected by the end of TPS, but also of the local community here, which today benefits from these people’s participation in our labor force,” Wenski said in an interview March 12 with “EWTN News Nightly.”
It is not only relevant to “the humanitarian aspects” but also “the business aspects,” Wenski said. “And the president is a businessman; he should understand that this would hurt business in a very, very real way.”
Working Haitians in the Miami Archdiocese “pay millions of dollars in taxes,” Wenski said. The city would lose workers benefiting the “full labor market” Miami has within the agriculture business, construction business, hospitality business, and health care.
Ending TPS would ultimately be “sending people into a burning building,” he said. “Haiti is a country that is in free fall.”
“It has not had an elected official, it has not had a real government, in over six years. There’s no end in sight to the violence that is affecting about a third of the country, especially the capital area, where gangs control many parts of the neighborhoods, which make schooling impossible,” Wenski said.
“And that’s the exact opposite of what the TPS provisions when passed by Congress in the ’90s was designed to prevent,” Wenski said. “Of course, TPS means temporary protective status, but there’s no way for us to determine what temporary means because it’s beyond our control, because the situation in Haiti obviously hasn’t improved for a very long time.”
“That’s true as well as Nicaragua to a great degree, still true of Venezuela, and it’s certainly true of Cuba,” as “a lot of people came here during the Biden administration on a special humanitarian visa,” he said.
“Over 500,000 people came to this country in that way. That means that they never spent a day illegal in this country because they came here legally, invited by the U.S. government, if you will, given a humanitarian visa, and then all of a sudden, in one fell swoop, they become without legal status and are told to go home,” Wenski said.
Situation in Cuba
Wenski also discussed how “Cubans in Miami are very hopeful that there will be some type of a regime change,” following the Trump administration suggesting a possible “friendly takeover” of the island nation.
“I would say Cubans in Cuba are also very hopeful, but everybody’s a bit nervous too,” he said. Based on conversation with members of the Cuban Church, “they’ve always been advocating a soft landing for when necessary changes come to Cuba.”
“They need a soft landing, not a landing that would be harsh, that would cause more violence,” Wenski said. “Whether the Trump administration has the ability to engineer such a soft landing still remains to be seen.”
“But right now, Cuba is being choked. There’s no food, there’s no fuel, there’s no freedom, and for many people, no hope,” he said. “And so even with some changes coming to Cuba, it’ll be a long time before the economy can be rebooted to provide for the needs of the population on an island.”
Church’s role
The Church has been a source to promote “dialogue” and “reconciliation,” Wenski said. “Right now, the Church in Cuba is cooperating with the United States because after Hurricane Melissa that affected Cuba several months ago, the first aid that reached Cuba was from the Archdiocese of Miami.”
Then, Secretary of State Marco Rubio “approved $3 million from the U.S. government, and for the first time in history, the Cuban government accepted money coming from the U.S. government. It was going to be distributed through Cáritas, which is … the charity agency of the Church in Cuba.”
“After that first $3 million was distributed, the Trump administration also granted another $6 million for that hurricane,” he explained. “But it’s the Catholic Church that is leading the aid and distributing it on the island, cooperating with the United States, and at the same time, cooperating with the Cuban authorities, because the Cuban authorities have to step back and allow the Church to distribute the aid, and things are happening.”
“So the Church is a very important player in Cuba and beyond,” he said.