DORAL, Florida, USA (AP) — Wilmer Escaray left Venezuela in 2007 and enrolled in Miami Dade College before opening his first restaurant six years later. He now has a dozen businesses that hire Venezuelan migrants like he once was, workers who are now terrified by what could be the end of their legal protection against deportation.
Since early February, the Trump administration has ended two federal programs that together allowed more than 700,000 Venezuelans to live and work legally in the United States, as well as hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans.
In the largest Venezuelan community in the United States, people fear what they could face if the demands seeking to stop the government fail. It is the only thing talked about in “Little Venezuela” or “Doralzuela,” a city of 80,000 people surrounded by the expansion of Miami, highways, and the Florida Everglades.
Fears of deportation in “Doralzuela”
People who lose their protections would have to stay illegally at the risk of being deported or returning home, a route that is unlikely given the political and economic turmoil in Venezuela.
“It is truly quite regrettable to lose that human capital, because there are people who do work here that others are not going to do,” said Escaray, 37, in one of his restaurants, “Sabor Venezolano.”
Spanish is more common than English in the shopping centers along the wide avenues of Doral, and Venezuelans feel like they are back home but with more safety and comfort.
A sweet aroma emanates from the round and flat corn arepas sold in many establishments. Stores in gas stations sell flour and white cheese used to make arepas, as well as t-shirts and caps with the yellow, blue, and red stripes of the Venezuelan flag.
New lives at risk
John arrived from Venezuela nine years ago and bought a growing construction company with a partner. He and his wife are under Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which Congress created in 1990 for individuals in the United States whose home countries are considered unsafe to return to due to natural disasters or civil conflicts. Beneficiaries can live and work while the situation lasts, but TPS does not offer a path to citizenship.
Born in the United States, her five-year-old daughter is a citizen. John, 37, asked to be identified only by his first name out of fear of being deported.
His wife helps with the administration in his construction business while working as a real estate agent. The couple told their daughter that they might have to leave the United States. Venezuela is not an option.
“It hurts us that the government turns its back on us,” John said. “We are not people who came to commit crimes, we came to work, to build.”
A federal judge ordered on March 31st that the Temporary Protected Status be maintained until the next stage of the legal challenge process in court, and at least 350,000 Venezuelans were temporarily saved from losing their authorization to stay in the country. Escaray, the restaurant owner, stated that almost all of his 150 employees are Venezuelans, and more than 100 are protected by TPS.
Another federal immigration program that allowed more than 500,000 Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans to work and live legally in the United States - the humanitarian permit to stay in the country - expires on April 24 unless there is a judicial intervention.
Venezuelans were one of the main beneficiaries when former President Joe Biden drastically expanded TPS and other temporary protections. Trump tried to cancel them in his first term and now in his second.
Migration policy
The end of Temporary Protected Status has generated little political reaction among Republicans, except for three Cuban-American representatives from Florida who have called for avoiding the deportations of affected Venezuelans. Mario Díaz-Balart, Carlos Gimenez, and Maria Elvira Salazar have urged the government to prevent the deportation of Venezuelans with no criminal records and to review TPS beneficiaries on a case-by-case basis.
The mayor of Doral, home to a Trump golf club since 2012, wrote a letter to the president asking him to find a legal path for Venezuelans who have not committed crimes.
“These families don’t want handouts,” said Christi Fraga, daughter of Cuban exiles. “They want an opportunity to keep working, building, and investing in the United States.”
The elite of a country, followed by the working class
Approximately eight million people have fled Venezuela since 2014, initially settling in neighboring countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. After the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more have set their sights on the United States, walking through the notorious jungle in Colombia and Panama or flying to the United States with a humanitarian permit sponsored by a financial backer.
In Doral, upper middle-class professionals and businesspeople arrived to invest in properties and businesses when socialist Hugo Chávez won the presidency in the late 1990s. They were followed by political opponents and entrepreneurs who set up small businesses. In recent years, more low-income Venezuelans have come to work in service industries.
They are doctors, lawyers, estheticians, construction workers, and house cleaners. Some are naturalized U.S. citizens or live in the country illegally with children born in the United States. Others overstay their tourist visas, seek asylum, or have some form of temporary status.
Thousands of people arrived in Doral as the Miami International Airport facilitated decades of growth.
Frank Carreño, president of the Venezuelan American Chamber of Commerce and a resident of Doral for 18 years, said that there is an atmosphere of uncertainty.
“What’s going to happen? People don’t want to or can’t go back to Venezuela,” he pointed out.