A Republican in a deep-red state has become the latest voice in the party to break with President Donald Trump, per The Hill, chastising his administration for making a "huge mistake" following a recent Supreme Court ruling.
Rep. Carlos Giménez, a Florida Republican, made a Sunday appearance on CBS News's Face the Nation, where he touched on the Supreme Court's decision last week to allow the Trump administration to end temporary protective status for certain groups of immigrants, paving the way for them to be deported as part of his aggressive immigration agenda. While many Republican lawmakers have been generally supportive of Trump's plan, Giménez said that deporting Haitians in the wake of the court's ruling would be a "huge mistake," citing the highly unstable situation in the country at present.
"In the case of Haiti, without a doubt, Haiti is a failed state, and I think that deporting Haitians that are under TPS right now back to Haiti would be a huge mistake," Giménez told host Ed O'Keefe. "I mean, that’s the reason why TPS was established to begin with, just like with Venezuelans. If Venezuelans lose their TPS status, which they have, too, we should reinstate that because of the devastation caused by these earthquakes that happened last week."
"Haiti remains locked in a severe humanitarian crisis driven by compounding natural disasters and near-total gang governance," The Hill detailed in a report about the congressman's comments. "The intersection of catastrophic earthquakes, systemic political collapse and widespread paramilitary violence has left millions of citizens vulnerable, forcing international organizations to repeatedly sound the alarm. In 2021, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated, and the country was hit by a massive 7.2 magnitude earthquake in the southern peninsula."
In the wake of the court's ruling, roughly 350,000 Haitians in the U.S. are now at risk of being deported after being stripped of their Employment Authorization Documents.
"TPS... should not be abused. TPS is what it says, temporary protected status. And if you’re here for a number of years, you should change your status from TPS to something else," Giménez added later. "But, by the same token, it is meant to safeguard those that are fleeing countries which are either failed states and there would be at risk of going back to them, or countries that really can’t handle them right now, as the case of Venezuela."
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, during an appearance on CNN last week, put the blame for the situation on the immigrants who did not take the steps to pursue a different status during their years in the U.S., arguing that "the whole time these individuals have been here underneath the temporary protected status, they could have applied for a visa."