Many in Orlando’s tourism industry fear deportations

Monday’s deadline for Haitian and Salvadoran nationals to seek re-registration for Temporary Protected Status looms in the mind of Eldine Magnan, director of housekeeping at Orlando’s Rosen Centre hotel. Thousands of people with TPS work in Orlando’s tourism mecca along International Drive or around Disney World, SeaWorld, Universal Orlando and the Orange County Convention Center. Around 1,000 work for Rosen Hotels & Resorts alone, which has seven locations.

“It’s difficult, it’s scary,” Magnan said of the Trump administration’s crackdown on TPS. “We have employees who started families here, and now they’re worried. What are they going to do?”

She herself is a U.S. citizen who has worked at Rosen hotels for 23 years, having been born in New York. But she also lived in Haiti for years, and understands what some Haitians face if they must return to the Caribbean nation. She said her staff is praying and hoping something will change, that they’ll be granted some type of amnesty.

“We have employees who are scared, they’re depressed … I have associates who said they can’t sleep at night,” Magnan said.

The Trump administration has decided to end protected status for people from Haiti, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Sudan, and is considering other nations. Refugees from those nations were granted the temporary status because of war, disaster or persecution. The administration has decided such conditions no longer exist.

Harris Rosen, founder and owner of Rosen Hotels & Resorts, has spearheaded an effort to build a school and rebuild homes that were damaged by the disasters in Haiti. But Magnan says Haiti is still reeling from the 2010 magnitude 7 earthquake — which destroyed an already fragile infrastructure — and the 2016 strike by Hurricane Matthew, which was a Category 4 when it hit Haiti.

The U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service has provided directions for those who want to reapply, for Haiti and for El Salvador. The only way to do so that’s listed online is to mail in an application and related information. Even if they re-register successfully, the TPS program for Haiti is set to expire in July 2019.