Friday, June 22, 2018, Family Action Network Movement (FANM) organized a TPS Summit discussing the impact of the Trump administration rescinding Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti and El Salvador and how Congress must step in to find a permanent solution for these families.
Marleine Bastien, Executive Director of FANM, along with Archbishop Tomas Wenski, Archdiocese of Miami, Florida, Randy McGrorty, Executive Director, Catholic Legal Services, Scott Galvin, North Miami Council along with politicians and Miami community leaders, came together as part of a summit where they discussed how the decision to end TPS could ultimately lead to more family separation given that the more than 300,000 TPS holders — legal immigrants — facing deportation are parents to 273,000 US citizen children. Without a solution by Congress, hundreds of thousands of U.S. children could be forcibly separation from their parents.
Ms Bastien and other advocates say the 300,000-plus TPS recipients have 273,000 U.S.-born children. Randolph McGrorty, the head of Catholic Legal Services, said the number is even higher — 500,000 — when you add in undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, known as "Dreamers" under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
"If a permanent solution is not found, what will happen to the 127,000 U.S.-born children? Will they be forced to go into unsafe situations ... or will they be forced to go to foster homes?" Bastien asked.
TPS recipients from Haiti and some Central American nations joined her and other immigration activists at the Little Haiti Cultural Center to discuss the 2019 expiration dates for TPS, and try to find ways to stop the expiration of the program.
Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, who attended the event, said, "The biggest problem with TPS is that when it was designed, there was no thought to what we do when temporary status becomes permanent status. And that's why we are in this situation right now.
