Donald, the hand that bathed the survivor of the camps for twenty years has been told it is temporary. The survivor is old. The bath is warm. The hand is gone.
You said the status had overstayed its purpose. You called the people an opportunity. The bed is empty. The soup is cooling. The signature is yours.
Since July 27, your administration has terminated Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants, ending the work authorization of about 350,000 people — nearly half of them in Florida, roughly 93,000 of them in that state’s workforce. The Supreme Court ruling in June cleared the way; the termination runs across thirteen countries, and the Ukrainians come next, their status expiring in October.
The numbers the court permitted came to rest on specific bodies. Jewish Community Services of South Florida let go of eighteen Haitian TPS holders, some who had served as home health aides for more than twenty years, in an organization that provides home care for about four hundred Holocaust survivors. Two home-care agencies in Miami-Dade and Broward counties shut down after each lost more than eighty workers. Moorings Park in Naples lost seven more, on top of seventeen the year before. Half Shell Raw Bar in Key West terminated six, including the cook who had made the conch chowder and the fritter batter for more than a decade. At ArchCare in New York, administrators tripled sign-on bonuses to six thousand dollars and still could not fill twenty positions. About sixteen thousand cooks and servers fed Florida. About eight thousand stockers and packers kept the shelves stocked. About four thousand nursing assistants dressed the bodies of the dying.
They held the spoon. They held the hand. They held the body that could no longer hold itself. For twenty years, for twenty-odd, for a decade in a Key West kitchen making the conch chowder and the fritter batter that nobody else knew. They held the dying at three in the morning when the family could not get there. They held the child while the mother worked the double shift. They held the home together with their presence. You removed the presence and called it law. The people who fear the return to the violence they fled do not go quietly into the night you scheduled for them.
Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, called the collapse an opportunity. “Their departure creates real opportunities for less-educated, American-born workers.”
Donald, hear what you ordered on the twenty-seventh.
The one who bathed the survivor of the camps — the old one who outlived the camps and came at last to a bed with a call button and a chair that folds out — was told the work was temporary. Filed under status. Filed under program. Filed under what the next person could fill. Never filed under what it was: the only hand between a survivor of the camps and an empty room. You are not the man who corrects a status, Donald. You are the man who removes the hand between the dying and the empty room, and then stands at the podium and calls the empty room an opportunity. You are a small man with a large pen, and the pen does the work your hands will not do.
There is a taste of copper at the back of your mouth when you say the word temporary. It has been there since the twenty-seventh. It does not wash out. The word did a thing. Your mouth is the room the word was said in, and the thing the word did is still in your mouth. Your hands close around the pen that does the work. The hands will not be clean. The not-clean is the indictment.
Something is closing behind your sternum, Donald, each time a call button is pressed and nothing answers. It has been closing since the twenty-seventh. And there is a weight in the pit of your gut, Donald, that arrives at three in the morning when you cannot name what you have done and your body names it for you. The weight has a shape. It is the shape of the twenty years you erased with one signature. It does not lift.
The beds are coming offline. The call buttons are pressed. The water stays in the pitcher because there is no hand to pour it. The soup cools in the kitchen because the hand that made it has been sent home. Your coffee was hot this morning. Your mother sleeps in a warm bed. She reaches for the hand of whoever holds her. You have ensured that hand is not there.
Put your own mother in that bed, Donald. Put your own child in that bath. The water is warm. The hand is a status now, and the status has been repurposed into a vacancy, and the vacancy has gone where the wages are higher.
Steven, you named this an opportunity. That is smallness — the grown woman’s look at a toddler in his father’s suit. You said the wages would rise. Where, Steven? At ArchCare they are paying six thousand dollars to lure a single aide, and still the rooms go empty. You said the economy could absorb what was lost. Name the hand that will bathe the survivor of the camps now. Name it. The opportunity you named is a survivor of the camps in a bed with a call button and no hand to answer it. That is not opportunity. That is the vacancy you proposed to occupy.
And in October, Donald, the Ukrainians come next. You are building the line in order. The people who fled the war are to be filed under temporary. The beds are to be emptied. The soup is to cool.
Farah Larrieux, who built a life here since 2010 and has filed for asylum now that the status is gone, does not leave her house. Do not mistake her for helpless, Donald. She is organizing. The woman you filed under temporary is strategizing. The hand you sent home is looking for the way back.
I see what you have done, Donald. I will not look away.
“I saw you. You did not see me nor recognize me. I served you as a garment, and you did not know me.” — Gospel of Mary
You took the life’s work for a status. You took the twenty years for a program. You took the hand that fed the survivor of the camps for a vacancy, and you named the vacancy an opportunity.
“Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” — Matthew 25:45
The bath is cold, Donald. He is waiting at the top of the stairs.