For Linda Mancuso, a Long Island mother raising two children including 23-year-old nonverbal, disabled son Michael, Jean, a Haitian caregiver employed by a local nonprofit, was far more than just a support worker — he was a lifeline. For years, Jean handled every intimate, hands-on task Michael cannot complete on his own, from showering and eating to tying his shoes. When Mancuso made the agonizing decision to place Michael in residential care at 19, Jean’s compassionate connection with her son finally gave her the peace of mind she had longed for. That stability collapsed in late July, when Jean, along with 18 other Haitian coworkers at the nonprofit, was laid off after their Temporary Protected Status (TPS) expired.
TPS is a U.S. immigration program that grants eligible citizens from crisis-stricken, unsafe nations the right to live and work legally in the country. The termination of Haitian TPS was first announced by the Trump administration in June 2025, following Trump’s 2024 election victory, where strict immigration restriction was a central campaign promise. After a protracted legal battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, the nation’s highest court ruled in the administration’s favor, clearing the way for an estimated 350,000 Haitian TPS holders to lose their legal status by the end of July. Without active TPS, holders can no longer work legally and face immediate risk of deportation.
The impact of this policy change has hit the U.S. direct care and health care industry particularly hard, as Haitian immigrants make up one of the largest segments of the nation’s caregiving workforce. Kezia Scales, vice president of policy and research at the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, confirms Haiti ranks among the top five origin countries for immigrants in the U.S. direct care sector. Long before the TPS termination, the industry was already grappling with severe understaffing and years-long waitlists for critical services from home health care to assisted living. Scales emphasizes that when immigrant workers are excluded from the domestic labor market, there simply are not enough available U.S.-born workers to fill these critical, low-wage roles.
The staffing crisis is playing out at care organizations across the country. At AHRC Nassau, the New York nonprofit that employed Jean, CEO Stanfort Perry says the organization has already been forced to cut 19 Haitian workers this year alone, following 22 layoffs in 2025 amid broader immigration crackdowns. Perry explains that recruiting and training a single qualified care worker takes months, and the nonprofit cannot compete with higher wages offered by fast-food chains, grocery stores and retail outlets to attract replacement staff. In South Florida, Jewish Community Services, which serves a large population of senior clients including many Holocaust survivors, lost 18 Haitian TPS holders to layoffs. The organization has been forced to require remaining staff to work constant overtime, creating massive financial strain for the nonprofit. Sarah Katzenstein, the organization’s director of strategic communications, says the loss is particularly devastating for elderly clients, many of whom built decades-long trusting relationships with their Haitian caregivers — a bond especially critical for Holocaust survivors who struggle to connect with new people. These intimate care relationships cannot be easily replaced.
Advocacy groups and care organizations are pushing Congress to pass bipartisan legislation that would extend TPS for Haitian caregivers, but the bill has stalled in the Senate due to Republican opposition. The Trump administration has defended the policy: a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson rejected claims that the health care sector relies on TPS holders, calling the argument “grossly false and lazy” and reiterating that TPS is intended to be a temporary status. White House immigration czar Tom Homan defended ongoing deportations of Haitians in a recent CNN interview, saying the Supreme Court had ruled the removals were legal and that the administration was simply carrying out the will of the American voters who backed Trump’s immigration agenda.
Public opinion on the policy is divided. An AP-NORC poll conducted in recent weeks found that overall support for Trump’s immigration agenda has dropped 10 percentage points since the start of his second term, though it still remains stronger than support for his handling of issues like the economy. Around half of all U.S. adults surveyed say Trump has gone too far on deportations, a number unchanged since the start of 2026. A June 2025 Pew Research Center poll, conducted before the TPS termination took effect, found that 59% of Americans disapproved of ending Haitian TPS, while just 39% supported the move.
For families like the Mancusos, the policy change has created irreversible upheaval. Michael cannot articulate his loss, but Mancuso says he clearly misses Jean and does not understand why his trusted caregiver is gone. Her anxiety over her son’s care, already high, has spiked dramatically. She is not only fighting for her own son’s stability, but also for Jean and thousands of other Haitian TPS holders who now live in constant fear of deportation to gang-ravaged Haiti, even as they built careers and lives supporting vulnerable Americans. “I’m hoping against hope that this thing gets resolved,” Mancuso says. “I care about Jean as a human being — he needs a livelihood, he’s good at what he does, and he helped my son. And I want him back.”