Miami-Dade authorities ask Trump to prevent the deportation of 24,000 Haitians

Thousands of Haitians residing in Miami have avoided deportation over the last seven years thanks to a temporary federal protected status that welcomes them as refugees from a nation affected by natural disasters.

However, last May, the United States government announced that the status protecting the already 24,000 local Haitians, known as TPS, would come to an end in early 2018.

In this sense, Miami-Dade County commissioners have asked the Department of Homeland Security and President Donald Trump to reconsider this decision and extend Haiti's TPS for at least another 18 months.

"Thousands of Haitian beneficiaries have been living in the US for an average of seven to 25 years," he told the local newspaper Mami New Times Marleine Bastien, director of Fanm Ayisyen, a Miami-based immigration rights group. "Deporting them and forcing them to leave their children born in the United States will be a catastrophe of great magnitude," he said.

In 2010, a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, a disaster that was soon followed by 52 deadly aftershocks. About 160,000 people died and 2 million were left homeless.

The island nation continued to suffer long droughts and outbreaks of cholera, Zika and Chikungunya. Then, five years after the earthquake, Hurricane Matthew devastated the south of the country, killing a thousand people, flooding miles of crops, and destroying national infrastructure.

At least 58,000 Haitian citizens found refuge in the US under the TPS program and, according to a recent census, some 10,600 children raised in Miami by Haitian beneficiaries have been born within the northern country.

"It doesn't help us make people go underground to avoid deportation," he told the MNT. Miami-Dade Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava, which co-sponsored the county's request. Although the commission requested an extension of only 18 months, Levine Cava says he hopes Haiti's TPS will be renewed for as long as necessary.

"TPS is a provisional measure on the path towards comprehensive immigration reform," he said.

With information from Miami New Times