Trump returns to Mar-a-Lago. So do busloads of outraged protesters.

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Trump returns to Mar-a-Lago. So do busloads of outraged protesters.

By Julie K. Brown


They came by the busloads from Miami and Orlando.

Husbands, wives, children. Housekeepers from Disney World. Cooks from some of Miami’s most luxurious hotels. They were maintenance workers, dishwashers, waiters and farmers. Many own homes, pay taxes and volunteer in their communities.

Waving flags and hoisting signs while chanting “Shut it down!” hundreds of hospitality union workers from across Florida marched in the searing sun on a bridge overlooking Mar-a-Lago Tuesday afternoon. The protesters, immigrants who work in the state’s $90 billion tourism industry, were there in advance of President Trump, who was scheduled to arrive Tuesday to spend the Thanksgiving holiday at his coastal resort.

Most of the demonstrators have had special protections from deportation, after fleeing hurricane- and disaster-prone countries; some of them have lived in Florida for decades. Now that will all end, as President Trump moves ahead with ending the protections, known as TPS, or Temporary Protected Status.

The administration says the effects of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake — as well as upheavals in El Salvador — have subsided, and that TPS was always meant to be temporary, as its name indicates. Supporters of the Trump also argue that voters expressed their desire for curbing immigration when they elected him president.

In Florida, the move will affect tens of thousands of Haitians, Hondurans and Salvadorans, many of whom have worked in hotels, theme parks and restaurants.

“We are very scared. We don’t know what will happen. I will have to leave in the middle of the night so I won’t get arrested,” said Belinda Osorio, who came to Florida in 1991 from Honduras, one of the world's most violent countries. She earns $10.50 an hour as a housekeeper in a resort in Orlando. She has an American-born husband, two young children and owns a home.

“After working so many years, and working so hard, they want to tear us apart. We aren’t living off the government. We pay taxes. What we have, we worked for,” she said.

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http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article185889753.html