Trump administration's ending of TPS for Haitians accelerates staffing crunch in elder care

Wearing green, bold-framed glasses and his grey uniform, Richard makes the rounds taking out the trash through the halls of Sinai Residences, an assisted living center in Boca Raton, Florida.

He’s one of 26 Haitian staff losing their work permits here, because the Trump administration is ending Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for roughly 350,000 Haitians.

The designation was created after the devastating 2010 earthquake hit that country; the authorization for these Haitians to live and work legally in the U.S. will expire in early February unless court challenges are successful.

The aging care industry is expected to lose many workers — like Richard — as a result, at a time when demand for elder care is only growing and Americans are getting older.

Marketplace is not using his legal name due to his immigration situation. If he’s deported to Haiti, he faces serious personal risk. “I'm afraid. Honestly, they kill the president to Haiti. They can kill anybody.”

Since the Haitian president was killed in 2021, violent gangs run much of the country.

Richard is 30 and came to the U.S. a few years ago after a gang attacked him. A family member sponsored him through a Biden-era immigration program. With the $35,000 or so Richard earns annually, he’s been paying for school to become a licensed practical nurse.

“Because I love [to take] care of people,” he said.

If he loses TPS — which authorizes him to work and protects him from deportation — he’ll try to stay in South Florida. He likes the warm weather and the friendly people. He’ll find gig work. But money will be tight and he’ll have to stop studying nursing.

“I didn’t save too much because I pay [for] school,” he said. “School is very expensive.”

Around 70% of the workers at Sinai Residences are foreign-born, and many are Haitian.

“Everyone that works here, they've got a smile on their face,” said Murray Rubin, a 92-year-old resident. “They're like family.”

He counts these years as the best of his life — except for when his wife died 19 months ago.

“We were married for 69 years, and the warmth and the empathy that the people — not only the residents, but the staff — showed, come and ask you if there's anything they could do for me. You know, you can't put dollars on that,” he said.

Sinai Residences CEO Rachel Blumberg said not only does the ending of TPS disrupt relationships between residents and staff, but it costs money.

“We've made multiple wage increases to all of our positions, but particularly the positions that are affected by TPS, which are licensed nurses, CNAs, maintenance, housekeeping, culinary, dishwashers,” she said.

She expects the competition for labor to intensify, possibly leading to a wage war in South Florida.

“There will be a ripple effect, and everybody's going to be fighting for the same employees in the same city,” she said.

Her industry depends on Haitian and other foreign-born workers as it faces a deficit of caregivers and other workers. This year, more U.S. elder care facilities have had to downsize due to staffing shortages despite growing demand, according to Blumberg.

“These are concerning times ahead,” she said. “Boomers are aging at an unprecedented rate than we've ever seen before in senior living.”

Beyond health care, cutting these workers off from their jobs has a broader impact within the Haitian community. Wages earned by Haitians here help support family back home.

Advocate Paul Namphy with the Family Action Network Movement said the U.S. is turning legal workers into undocumented immigrants, “cutting off people's economic lifeline here, threatening to deport them to Haiti. Again, it’s lose, lose, lose because it’s also a loss for the people inside Haiti.”

Roughly 16% of Haiti’s GDP in 2024 came from remittances, according to The World Bank.

TPS holder Mary, a certified nursing assistant at Sinai Residences, supports her dad, who has cancer back home in Haiti, and her four kids here in South Florida. After 20 years in the United States, she’s unsure how she’ll provide for her family without being able to legally work and live in the country.

“I don't know what I can do,” she said. “The only thing to do is pray to God [to] do something for us, because it's really hard. When you got four kids, you can’t drive, and then you can’t work to give them food, so it’s really hard.”