Loss of work authorization sows confusion for thousands of Haitian immigrants and their US employers

KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) — For more than a month, Bobby Kuchinsky arrived at his restaurant each morning worried about whether he still had enough staff or if this might be the last shift for some of his Haitian workers, who have spent over a decade as cooks, busboys and oyster shuckers.

On Tuesday, he suspended six of them after they lost authorization to work in the U.S.

Kuchinsky and thousands of other business owners and managers are living in a state of constant uncertainty because confusion clouds the status of work permits for Haitian employees with Temporary Protected Status, better known as TPS.

As part of its crackdown on legal and illegal immigration, the Trump administration terminated TPS for about 1 million people from more than a dozen countries, including 350,000 Haitians who have been living and working legally in the U.S. since 2010. The termination, which exposed them to deportation, was challenged in district courts. On June 25, the Supreme Court sided with the government, allowing the TPS program to end.