Haitians

Public transportation is a big problem in the area, but the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority is trying to make it a little easier to get across the bay – especially if you need to catch a flight in Tampa.

Experts said the TPS healthcare workforce exodus will be felt most acutely in New York, Massachusetts and Florida. Florida, with its high populations of older people and immigrants, will be particularly hard hit.

Saying scores of her Haitian constituents are being threatened with deportation, Democratic U.S. Rep. Frederica S. Wilson has written President Donald Trump and other top administration officials urging them to extend Temporary Protected Status to hundreds of thousands of Haitian nationals.

The suit filed in Washington, D.C., alleges that President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Department Secretary Kristi Noem have ignored warnings not to travel to Haiti by State Department officials in seeking to terminate TPS.

The decision is based on the improved environmental situation in Haiti, which DHS say is deemed safe for return. TPS allows people in the US to live and work legally if their native countries are deemed unsafe due to natural disaster or civil strife.

After seeing Venezuelan immigrants lose protected status, many Haitians worry they’re next

The landing Monday morning comes as the Caribbean nation is struggling with a surge of gang violence that has killed several thousand people in recent years and left hundreds of thousands homeless in the country’s capital.

The administration repatriated about 50 Haitians on Thursday, authorities said, marking the first deportation flight in several months to the Caribbean nation struggling with surging gang violence.

Haiti is a country in crisis. Freelance photojournalist Octavio Jones, who's worked with WUSF and NPR, was on the ground there earlier this week and documented what he saw.

The arrests include Frederick Joseph Bergmann Jr. of Tampa.

The Homeland Security Task Force - Southeast said they have stopped or removed more than 1,300 refugees at sea or from Dry Tortugas National Park and other areas of the Florida Keys since Dec. 30 and urged family members of Cubans and Haitians thinking of making their way to the U.S. to dissuade such efforts.

Federal officials became overwhelmed as nearly 500 Cuban migrants landed in or near the Keys between Dec. 30 and Jan. 1, before 100 Haitians in a sailboat arrived in Key Largo on Tuesday. Arrivals forced Dry Tortugas National Park to close.