By Tami Luhby, CNN
(CNN) — Jan Gautam may soon have to let go of hundreds of workers at dozens of hotels in Florida. That’s why the CEO of IHRMC Hotels & Resorts is closely watching an immigration case that’s before the Supreme Court this week.
The employees are Haitians with Temporary Protected Status, known as TPS. Their ability to live and work in the United States was scheduled to expire in early February, but a federal judge paused the Trump administration’s termination of their protections. The administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which is set to hear oral arguments in the case on Wednesday.
Roughly 30% of Gautam’s hotel staff in Florida are Haitians who are TPS holders, working as housekeepers, landscapers, supervisors and in other positions. If he is forced to dismiss them, he could have to keep some rooms closed at times because the hotels won’t be able to promptly prepare them for the next guests. Plus, he’ll have to spend thousands of dollars training each new employee, further squeezing his profit margin.
All in all, if the TPS holders lose their status, it will cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as a lot of time and a lot of headaches, he said.
“We need to have these people,” Gautam said. “You train them and then they have to leave not by their choice but by someone else’s choice.”
The fate of Gautam’s staff and more than other 350,000 Haitian immigrants rests in the hands of the Supreme Court justices, who have sided with the Trump administration in most of its appeals involving immigration. TPS relief, which allows holders to live and work in the United States, applies to people who would face extreme hardship if forced to return to homelands devastated by armed conflict or natural disasters.
Haitian immigrants became eligible after an earthquake rocked the country in 2010. The designation has since been renewed multiple times as the country faces a host of crises, including widespread violence by armed gangs, food insecurity, displacement and a leadership vacuum after the president was assassinated in 2021.
Five Haitian TPS holders are challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s termination of the protections, arguing that the agency didn’t conduct the necessary review of whether it’s safe to return to Haiti and that the agency’s decision stems, in part, from President Donald Trump’s racial animus. DHS has argued the protections were never intended to be permanent.
“Haiti’s TPS was granted following an earthquake that took place over 15 years ago,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. “It was never intended to be a de facto amnesty program, yet that’s how previous administrations have used it for decades. Temporary means temporary and the final word will not be from activist judges legislating from the bench.”
Workers, consumers, taxpayers
Many Haitians with TPS have lived in the United States for years, building careers, buying homes and having families. Florida has the largest share by far, but tens of thousands also reside in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio and other states.
Nearly 190,000 Haitian TPS holders were employed in early 2025, according to an analysis by FWD.us, a policy and advocacy organization focusing on immigration and criminal justice. Many work in retail, hospitality, healthcare and other industries – serving as cooks and servers