Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) claimed that American citizens “will pay even higher prices” for things such as groceries, housing, and health care if thousands of Haitian migrants who have received Temporary Protected Status (TPS) get deported.
While speaking at a press conference, Wasserman Schultz described the Supreme Court’s decision allowing the Trump administration to end TPS amnesty for Haitian and Syrian migrants as “disgusting.”
“Hundreds of thousands of families who followed the law, passed multiple criminal background checks, earned work permits and paid taxes will be torn apart, thrown in ICE jails or sent back to a nation overrun by criminal gangs who murder and kidnap at will,” Wasserman Schultz said. “Haitian American children, U.S. citizens will be orphaned, detained in horrific conditions, or deported alongside their parents to imminent danger.”
Wasserman Schultz continued: “Americans will pay even higher prices for groceries, health care, housing, and childcare. We must make sure that we continue our mission to protect our law-abiding neighbors from ICE brutality, provide a lawful pathway to permanent status, and it has never been more urgent. And, I plan to do that.”
During the press conference, Wasserman Schultz also said that whenever she has done press conferences regarding TPS, she is “nearly always able to get a TPS recipient.” Wasserman Schultz accused President Donald Trump of having created a “culture of fear” that “prevented anyone from having the ability to” join in on the press conference.
“You know, when I have done a press conference around TPS, and we’ve done many over the years — I’m nearly always able to get a TPS recipient to join me to talk about the impact on their life, and what TPS has been able to do for their safety and their security and their ability to not end up dead, or endangered, or sexually assaulted, or brutalized in their home country,” Wasserman Schultz said. “The culture of fear that Donald Trump has created, understandably prevented anyone from having the ability to be able to join us this morning.”
Wasserman Schultz’s words come after the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, wrote that “Congress created TPS in 1990 to provide short-term humanitarian relief for aliens who cannot safely return to their home countries.”
The Supreme Court also said that the TPS statute does not allow “judicial review of any determination” regarding TPS amnesty being ended:
The TPS statute plainly bars consideration of respondents’ non-constitutional claims. It allows ” no judicial review of any determination… with respect to the… termination” of a TPS designation. 8 U. S. C. §1254a(b)(5)(A). The term “determination” can be used to describe either an individual decision or the whole process leading to a final decision, and under either understanding of the term, §1254a(b)(5)(A) squarely bars all of respondents’ non-constitutional claims.
In response to the Supreme Court’s decision, Democrats such as Rep. Rob Menendez (D-NJ), Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), and Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) accused the Trump administration of wanting “to create the largest undocumented population” in order to deport and remove “as many people as possible.”
“This administration wants to create the largest undocumented population that it possibly can, to fulfill Stephen Miller’s mission of deporting and removing as many people as possible,” Menendez said. “This isn’t about good policy, or about what’s right or wrong for the United States. This purely about inflicting as much pain on our immigrant neighbors as possible, to drive the largest number of them possible out of this country.”