"Don't contact your patients"

She was the first Haitian I had ever gotten to know.

She and the other nurses helped our large and diverse household so much through months of terminal illness, hospice, and the death of a loved one.

She was strong, tall, and elegant, always standing very straight, head held high.

Almost intimidating, her size, stance, and presence. She was able to lift and move a paralyzed Parkinson's patient easily and comfortably. Able to prepare a meal, clean up, wash clothes, iron and sweep, feed her patient with kindness and care, attend to medications, and still, by the late afternoon, find time to sit down with her studies.

She was a Registered Nurse back home in Haiti. In our home, she studied every spare moment to pass the Florida State nursing exam. It took her six months, but she did it.

All in English, a new language for her.

I loved hearing her speak with her daughter on the phone in Haitian Creole; it was so colorful and delightful to the ear. Many words sounded like the French I had studied in school. After a month or so, I started to greet her in French, and she couldn't hide her amusement and glee.

I would say "Bonjour, Madame," each morning. "À tout à l'heure," in the afternoon, and "Bonne nuit, à demain matin," when everyone went to sleep at night.

For some reason, it made her laugh. A big, boisterous, joyous laugh each time I spoke French.

It's been a year now since the death in our family that caused her to look for work elsewhere. But we've kept in touch. Every month or so she'd send me a note asking how I was holding up. She understood how great our loss had been.

I encouraged her as she told me about her search for new work, and I was so glad a few weeks later to hear she had been hired as an RN at a local nursing agency. We exchanged messages about her daughter, who was doing well in high school and would soon graduate. I was happy to hear that her younger son back in Haiti, living with his grandmother, was safe and well.

She was so relieved she could send them money every month, now that she had work again.

Then, last week, I received a heartbreaking message. Her employer wrote:

"As of this morning, do not come to work. You are no longer employed. Do not contact your patients."

It was July 28.

TPS, the program that provides Temporary Protected Status to Haitian immigrants, was terminated by the Trump administration on July 27, 2026.

It happened so fast, and they knew it was coming. Yet they hoped that, by some miracle, the decision would be overturned.

It was not.

More than 750,000 Haitian immigrants and their families live in the United States, with about half residing in Florida, where we live.

Already now, just a week later, ICE is rounding up Haitians and putting ankle monitors on them, getting them ready for deportation.

My friend is scared.

So am I.

I am afraid for her and her family. I fear for immigrants everywhere.

I fear for the country in which I live.

I fear for our world.

And I will look for all the ways I can to help my friend and others like her in troubled times like these.

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Further reading:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/they-lost-their-work-permits-and-their-legal-status-returning-to-haiti-is-still-unimaginable

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2026/08/03/ice-begins-outfitting-haitian-immigrants-with-ankle-monitors-attorneys-say/