By Tami Luhby, CNN
(CNN) — Jan Gautam may soon have to let go of hundreds of workers at dozens of hotels in Florida. That’s why the CEO of IHRMC Hotels & Resorts is closely watching an immigration case that’s before the Supreme Court this week.
The employees are Haitians with Temporary Protected Status, known as TPS. Their ability to live and work in the United States was scheduled to expire in early February, but a federal judge paused the Trump administration’s termination of their protections. The administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which is set to hear oral arguments in the case on Wednesday.
Roughly 30% of Gautam’s hotel staff in Florida are Haitians who are TPS holders, working as housekeepers, landscapers, supervisors and in other positions. If he is forced to dismiss them, he could have to keep some rooms closed at times because the hotels won’t be able to promptly prepare them for the next guests. Plus, he’ll have to spend thousands of dollars training each new employee, further squeezing his profit margin.
All in all, if the TPS holders lose their status, it will cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as a lot of time and a lot of headaches, he said.
“We need to have these people,” Gautam said. “You train them and then they have to leave not by their choice but by someone else’s choice.”
The fate of Gautam’s staff and more than other 350,000 Haitian immigrants rests in the hands of the Supreme Court justices, who have sided with the Trump administration in most of its appeals involving immigration. TPS relief, which allows holders to live and work in the United States, applies to people who would face extreme hardship if forced to return to homelands devastated by armed conflict or natural disasters.
Haitian immigrants became eligible after an earthquake rocked the country in 2010. The designation has since been renewed multiple times as the country faces a host of crises, including widespread violence by armed gangs, food insecurity, displacement and a leadership vacuum after the president was assassinated in 2021.
Five Haitian TPS holders are challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s termination of the protections, arguing that the agency didn’t conduct the necessary review of whether it’s safe to return to Haiti and that the agency’s decision stems, in part, from President Donald Trump’s racial animus. DHS has argued the protections were never intended to be permanent.
“Haiti’s TPS was granted following an earthquake that took place over 15 years ago,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. “It was never intended to be a de facto amnesty program, yet that’s how previous administrations have used it for decades. Temporary means temporary and the final word will not be from activist judges legislating from the bench.”
Workers, consumers, taxpayers
Many Haitians with TPS have lived in the United States for years, building careers, buying homes and having families. Florida has the largest share by far, but tens of thousands also reside in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio and other states.
Nearly 190,000 Haitian TPS holders were employed in early 2025, according to an analysis by FWD.us, a policy and advocacy organization focusing on immigration and criminal justice. Many work in retail, hospitality, healthcare and other industries – serving as cooks and servers, stockers and packers and nursing assistants.
They contribute an estimated $5.9 billion to the US economy, as well as pay $1.6 billion in federal, payroll, state and local taxes, FWD.us found.
“Stripping that [protection] away from hundreds of thousands of people is going to have incredible consequences,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us. “You’re going to see this show up in lots and lots of industries across the country.”
Emma, who has lived in the United States since she was a young child and secured TPS after the 2010 earthquake, is a history teacher at a public high school in Massachusetts, a field that suffers from shortages.
“I’m filling a critical role in the US economy,” she said, adding that she has worked at least one job, sometimes two, since she was 17. She asked that her last name not be used for fear of reprisal from the government.
Some immigration critics argue that newcomers take jobs away from native-born Americans. But a recent study by economists at two Federal Reserve banks that looked at employment in local economies after the arrival of a large number of unauthorized immigrants earlier this decade shows that’s not the case, said Michael Clemens, an economics professor at George Mason University. They found no evidence of displacement – and even an increase in jobs in the construction and leisure and hospitality industries.
“Across all sectors collectively, these immigrants are simply adding to overall employment in each city, not pushing any natives or authorized immigrants out of their jobs,” Clemens, who led a group of economists in filing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court that argued terminating TPS protections for more than 1 million immigrants from more than a dozen countries would “inflict massive harm” on the nation’s economy.
Employers have also told Rebecca Shi, executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition, that native-born residents often don’t apply for certain types of jobs, such as changing beds and cleaning bathrooms in hotels. That speaks to the essential and difficult work that TPS holders do, Shi said. Other employers told CNN that they also have difficulty attracting native-born workers for various positions.
Haitian TPS holders have also revitalized some local communities, such as Springfield, Ohio, where they were the subject of attacks by Trump, who accused them in a 2024 presidential debate of eating dogs and cats.
Springfield is “coming back” partly because of its Haitian immigrant residents who are working and spending money in the community, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine told CNN’s Dana Bash on Inside Politics in February.
“What the employers have told me time and time again is we hired Haitians a year, two, three years ago, frankly because we couldn’t fill these jobs,” he said. “If they lose Temporary Protected Status, then they no longer can work, and the companies can’t employ them. That’s a blow to the economy. It’s a blow to the state.”
The Haitian newcomers also started small businesses, particularly restaurants, in Springfield. That’s not surprising, said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, an immigration advocacy group that also provides services for Haitians and other Black immigrants. Many people who live in Haiti are entrepreneurs, merchants and business creators.
The alliance runs an entrepreneurship development program that has had 40 graduates, mainly TPS holders, so far. They have established hair salons, pop-up stores selling beauty products, restaurants, cleaning companies and other businesses in recent years.
“They have that spirit in them because of the economic structure of the country,” Jozef said.
Essential elder care workers
At Sinai Residences, 40 Haitian TPS holders help care for the roughly 500 older adult residents as certified nursing assistants, nurses, kitchen staffers and servers, dietary aides, housekeepers, maintenance workers and porters, said Rachel Blumberg, CEO of the senior living community in Boca Raton, Florida. They make up about 9% of employees, and some have been with Sinai Residences since it opened a decade ago.
Worried than she could suddenly lose an integral part of her staff, Blumberg has already spent $600,000 over the past year to increase wages, provide signing bonuses and train new employees.
“There is a significant financial impact to our community,” she said. “Unfortunately, that gets passed on to the seniors.”
Also, the looming expiration of TPS protections is coming at a time when hiring is tough, and America is aging. “The pool of interested employees is shrinking and the potential removal of the Haitian TPS employees is throwing salt on the wound,” Blumberg said.
But even more than the economic hit, Blumberg is worried about the effect on residents who have developed relationships with the Haitian TPS holders. Also, the longtime staffers know the residents’ needs and can pick up on changes in behavior that could signal a potential health problem.
Many senior living providers are concerned that they could have to reduce their capacity or services if they lose their employees who have TPS, said Steve Bahmer, CEO of LeadingAge Southeast, an association of nonprofit providers of aging services in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. Members in Florida have told him they expect to have to let go of 8% to 15% of their staff who care directly for residents, if Haitians lose their TPS protection.
“We’re talking about a primary labor source that’s structurally embedded in healthcare delivery,” Bahmer said. “There is no surplus workforce waiting for these jobs.”
Vanessa Joseph, 42, landed a job at Sinai Residences within a few months of gaining TPS nearly three years ago. Joseph, her 19-year-old son and her younger sister all fled Haiti after another one of her sisters was almost kidnapped twice and the business where she worked was set ablaze. Now they all live together in an apartment and work at Sinai Residences – she as a housekeeper, her sister as a kitchen staffer and her son as a server.
When the Trump administration tried to terminate TPS for Haitians last year, Joseph said she cried every day and had trouble sleeping. But she tried to keep it from her son because she didn’t want him to be scared too.
The family was granted asylum in February so they will not be affected by the Supreme Court decision. But many of her coworkers are in a state of panic, she said.
“They don’t know what they’ll do,” said Joseph. “Some may leave the country. Some may try to stay. They have bills to pay.”
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