South Florida residents, lawmakers react to Supreme Court decision ending TPS protections for over 500K immigrants

By Marisela Burgos, Rubén Rosario

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    MIAMI (WSVN) — The Supreme Court ended temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the U.S., allowing for their deportation, and the decision comes as a real gut punch to many in South Florida.

In Friday’s ruling, the Justices sided with President Donald Trump’s administration to end the humanitarian parole program for more than 500,000 immigrants.

It’s a topic that most people who were asked by 7News didn’t want to talk about — publicly.

“On one hand, it’s fine, and on the other, it’s wrong,” said one man in Spanish. “There are people who really need it.”

Another man, also speaking to 7News in Spanish, said that at this moment, the situation for all immigrants is complicated.

There are lawmakers who are taking a clear stance on the issue.

“This callous disregard for their safety is an outrage,” said U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Schultz, D-Fla., said she wants Americans to hold Trump accountable.

“The Supreme Court is allowing him to begin these deportations. Even though these people are still lawfully here, he’s just affirmatively terminating that lawful status and trying to kick them out,” she said.

But U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., agrees with the Supreme Court’s decision.

“I think the Supreme Court actually ruled in the right way. Anything that can be implemented by executive order can be actually, I think, taken away by executive order, so I have no problem with the legality of what they say,” said Gimenez.

The ruling impacts people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who are here and had temporary legal humanitarian parole protections, a program that was established by former President Joe Biden.

“They paid their way. They had jobs. They were paying taxes, and they were not undocumented, unlawful immigrants,” said Wasserman Schultz, “and Donald Trump has broken his promise, or rather, he clearly lied repeatedly when he said during the campaign, and since he took office, that he was going to go after the most vicious and violent criminals.”

But Gimenez was critical of the Biden administration’s policy and the impact that, he said, it has had on this pressing issue.

“The problem is, the Biden administration’s policy has actually poisoned the well for [temporary protected status] and for special status, because they allowed all kinds of people to come in under those statuses,” he said. “You allowed criminals, you allowed gang members, etcerera. People that didn’t really qualify for asylum were allowed in the United States, and now we have to clean up the mess.”

Gimenez said he wants to meet with the Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to protect communities like the ones in South Florida.

“They’re a part of our community, they’re a part of our economy, and they need to be treated as such,” he said. “And so, we’re going to be looking for some adjustments to what the enforcement mechanism of this ruling is going to be.”

The decision comes more than a week after the Supreme Court ruled to strip roughly 350,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. of their TPS protection.

“This is not what the president said he would do, and I really hope that Americans, particularly who came from those countries, remember and make him pay for it,” said Wasserman Schultz.

“It’s unfortunate that the Biden administration allowed this to happen. It’s unfortunate that the Biden administration, instead of following the law, allowed all kinds of people into the United States, and now the Trump administration is trying to clean that up,” said Gimenez, “It’s unfortunate that good people are going to be caught in it because of the incompetence of the Biden administration.”

However, the Supreme Court’s order is not a final ruling. It gets kicked back to a lower court, but it nevertheless means that those protections are not in place anymore.

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