7 min Click here to listen to this article

Share via Close extra sharing options Email Facebook X LinkedIn Threads Reddit WhatsApp Copy Link URL Copied! Print

Copy Link URL Copied!

This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred

As of this week, with a green light from the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority, President Trump is free to mount his long-promised mass deportation campaign in earnest. His Homeland Security Department notified employers last week that about 350,000 Haitian immigrants no longer are protected, triggering mass layoffs. His blood-stained Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has plans, CBS News reports, to begin sweeping them up.

But contrary to Trump’s reckless rhetoric, neither the Haitians nor another 1 million targeted immigrants from a dozen other nations are here illegally — at least they weren’t until the administration revoked their legal status after the Supreme Court’s go-ahead last month. On Wednesday, a federal district judge reluctantly made it official. All have been legal residents, many for years, under the 36-year-old humanitarian program granting temporary protected status to people who’ve fled countries roiled by war, natural disasters or other extraordinary crises. The protected status beneficiaries have been vetted, paid fees and gotten revetted every 18 months to keep a work permit and ensure they’ve steered clear of crime.

As that description suggests, we are not talking about deporting “the worst of the worst,” as Trump contends ad nauseum.

We are talking about law-abiding essential workers, many with U.S.-born children. And to make matters worse, these workers are being deported from a nation with an aging population and labor shortages. These are people who take jobs that many Americans won’t do, like bathing, diapering, feeding and generally keeping company with elderly citizens who need care and companionship. People who — if moral and humanitarian considerations aren’t enough for you — are crucial to the economies of many states, notably red ones including Florida and Ohio.

We’re talking about schools’ cafeteria workers and janitors, and the people who clean toilets and wheel disabled passengers to their flights at airports. Haitian workers at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport burst into tears when they were told to turn in their badges, the Washington Post reported Friday. We’re also talking about doctors, engineers and other well-educated professionals.

Like Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot, a Haitian in California who was the name plaintiff in the lawsuit against Trump’s effort to rescind protected status before its planned sunset and who was spotlighted by Justice Elena Kagan in a scathing dissent against the Supreme Court majority’s decision.

As Kagan recounted, Miot has lived in the United States for more than 15 years, since an earthquake in 2010 devastated Haiti and its economy and exacerbated political and gang violence that persists to this day. Miot works in a lab researching Alzheimer’s disease, thanks to his temporary protected status work permit. He also has Type 1 diabetes, an easily treatable disease here but potentially “a death sentence” in Haiti, Kagan wrote, “given that country’s collapsed health-care infrastructure.” Unless kidnappers in Haiti get him first, as Miot fears.

Something must be done for the hundreds of thousands like him, and can be. The House in April passed a bipartisan bill to extend protected status for Haitian migrants for three years. But two weeks ago, Republicans in the Senate blocked it. Even if the measure were revived and passed, Trump presumably would veto it.

Still, should the president maintain his xeonophobic, racist and economically foolish stance, he could at least delay deportations, allowing both the targeted employees and their employers the time to adjust, as numerous business groups for healthcare providers, small manufacturers, restaurants, hotels and other service industries have begged the administration to do. The National Restaurant Assn. warned in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin: “Many affected employees are long-serving, legally authorized workers who are central to restaurant operations. Their departure could remove a substantial share of the local hospitality workforce overnight.”

But consideration for real-life consequences is not how MAGA rolls. As the Trumpian truism goes, cruelty is the point — especially when it comes to immigration.

Trump ally Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, one of the Senate’s most far-right Republicans, heartlessly harrumphed in what passed for Senate debate: “America is not a global refugee camp.… America is our home, and when houseguests become squatters, you don’t delay enforcement. You call........

© Los Angeles Times