Florida Republican says deporting Haitians with TPS would be ‘huge mistake’

‘Haiti is a failed state’, says Carlos Giménez, congressman and Miami Cuban exile, after controversial court ruling Carlos Giménez, a Republican congressman from Florida, broke with the Trump administration on Sunday, calling on the White House to reconsider its push to eliminate temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitian migrants. Returning about 350,000 Haitians to their chaotic, dangerous homeland following the US supreme court’s ruling that the Trump administration can cut off temporary legal protections, would be a grave error, Giménez said. “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,” he told CBS News. Giménez also called for the reinstatement of TPS status to Venezuelans after the record-breaking twin earthquakes that struck north-central Venezuela on 24 June. Temporary protected status, Giménez said, “is meant to safeguard those who are either fleeing countries that are failed states and are at risk of going back to them or countries that really can’t handle them right now, as is the case with Venezuela that has suffered a natural disaster”. Giménez, whose family