Advocates raise concerns over healthcare industry impacts after ruling to end protections for Haitian immigrants
Supporters stood alongside Rep. Ritchie Torres and Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson on Wednesday afternoon at St. Luke's Episcopal Church to call on Congress and the Bronx community to support TPS holders.
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Fears and anxieties are growing as Haitians across the Bronx worry about being kicked out of the country.
“Defend temporary protected status” is what dozens of Bronxites came together to push for.
Especially Joy Montague, who worries her colleagues at Montefiore Medical Center and Citadel Nursing Home will suddenly be gone.
“The fear that people will disappear," Montague said. "People will be snatched and taken to we don't know where”
Many of her coworkers are immigrants living in the U.S. under a “Temporary Protected Status” or TPS.
Now that the United States Supreme Court ruled to allow the Trump administration to end these protections, hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians are now exposed to potential detention and deportation.
“It's a cruelty that's been done to a group of people for no reason except the color of their skin," Montague said. "It's going to impact us in ways that you cannot imagine.”
Montague says it will hit the healthcare industry especially hard, a line of work that is already seeing short staffing.
"We'll be burnt out," Montague said, "We will have physical injuries because we are carrying too much weight physically, emotionally. We work as a team, and when the one member of your team is missing, it's devastating."
Montague stood alongside Rep. Ritchie Torres and Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson Wednesday afternoon at St. Luke's Episcopal Church to call on Congress and the Bronx community to support TPS holders.
“We have on our side Congress," Gibson said. "We have our democratic congress members that can support actions in the House that can protect us. So what we're asking members of our community to do is reach out to your local council member. Tell them the importance of supporting immigrants, particularly our Haitian immigrants, but also our members from the Honduran community, Garifuna community, everyone."
And for Montague, who is now an American citizen after immigrating from Jamaica, she says she will keep fighting for the rights of her healthcare colleagues.
"We are hard workers. So why shouldn't we be rewarded with the American dream?" she says.
