Florida Nursing Homes Just Asked DHS to Save 35,000 Haitian Workers From Deportation

Tallahassee, Florida — Florida’s nursing home industry is pleading with the federal government to halt a deportation threat that could strip roughly 35,000 Haitian workers from long-term care facilities across the state.

The Florida Health Care Association, which represents 90% of the state’s nearly 700 nursing homes, sent a July 7 letter to the Department of Homeland Security asking officials to let Haitians with Temporary Protected Status continue working while they pursue lawful immigration pathways. The group warned that losing even a fraction of these caregivers would be devastating for a sector already stretched razor-thin.

“Any significant reduction in the available workforce would make it more difficult to serve current and new residents, causing a ripple effect that could overwhelm our local hospitals and the entire health care system,” FHCA CEO J. Emmett Reed wrote in the letter.

The request follows a Supreme Court decision that cleared the way to deport hundreds of thousands of nursing home workers, including the Haitian TPS holders who have become essential to keeping facilities staffed.

The Supreme Court recently ruled that the Trump administration can end TPS for Haitians, Syrians, and potentially more than 1.3 million immigrants who have legally lived and worked in the United States for years. TPS designations for Haitians were originally set to expire on July 10, but U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced a last-minute extension until July 24 — giving the industry a narrow window to push for exemptions.

Nationwide, one in five Haitian TPS holders works in health care, according to FHCA. In Florida, the concentration is even higher. Of the roughly 350,000 Haitians living in the country with TPS, about half reside in Florida. Reed estimated that approximately 35,000 of them fill critical roles in nursing homes — not just as certified nursing assistants, but as dietary staff, environmental services workers, and maintenance personnel.

The state’s long-term care providers have poured money into recruitment, training, wage increases, and retention initiatives, Reed said. But certified nursing assistants, dining staff, and environmental services workers remain in critically short supply. Florida is also on track to host one of the nation’s largest and fastest-growing older adult populations, which means labor demands are only going up.

Reed also pointed out that the state’s workforce shortages have persisted despite sustained investments in recruitment and retention. Certified nursing assistants, dietary staff, environmental services personnel, and maintenance employees all remain in critically short supply, and the gap isn’t closing.

FHCA is asking DHS to coordinate with federal and state health care agencies to evaluate the impact on long-term care before implementing any action that could further reduce an already strained workforce. The association wants officials to understand exactly what would happen if thousands of experienced caregivers were removed from the system overnight.

The July 24 extension is just days away, and nursing homes across the state are watching closely.