Almost four dozen Venezuelan workers who had temporary protected status have been put on leave by Disney after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to strip them of legal protections.
The move was made to make sure that the employees were not in violation of the law, Disney said in a statement Friday.
The 45 workers across the company who were put on leave will continue to get benefits.
“We are committed to protecting the health, safety, and well-being of all our employees who may be navigating changing immigration policies and how they could impact them or their families,” the statement said.
About two-thirds of the workers were in union jobs. The union contract for Walt Disney World service workers in Florida allows them to be reinstated without loss of seniority or benefits once they provide proper work authorization within a year of losing their jobs, said Julee Jerkovich, secretary-treasurer of the United Food And Commercial Workers International Union's Local 1625.
“It's very distressing,” Jerkovich said Friday. “Disney is being made to be the bad guy, but they didn't have any choice.”
Disney would have been criticized if the workers weren't put on leave, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents made raids at Disney World, she said.
The Supreme Court’s order on Monday put on hold a ruling from a federal judge in San Francisco that kept in place Temporary Protected Status for the Venezuelans that would have otherwise expired last month. The justices provided no rationale, which is common in emergency appeals.
The order potentially exposes as many as 350,000 Venezuelans to deportation. The status allows people already in the United States to live and work legally because their native countries are deemed unsafe for return due to natural disaster or civil strife.
The case was the latest in a string of emergency appeals President Donald Trump’s administration has made to the Supreme Court, many of them related to immigration and involving Venezuela. Earlier this month, the government asked the court to allow it to end humanitarian parole for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, setting them up for potential deportation as well.
Disney World is in Lake Buena Vista, part of the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford metropolitan area that has the second largest population of Venezuelans in the United States, according to 2021 U.S. Census data. It’s second only to the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach area.
“These workers — our colleagues, friends, and neighbors — have contributed immensely to the success of the Walt Disney Company and to the vibrant culture of Central Florida,” a coalition of unions at Disney World said in a statement. “No worker should have to live in fear of losing everything after building a life here.”
