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It’s late June, which means it’s the end of the Supreme Court term. And there’s one case I’m watching closely. It’s about Haitians who work as caregivers, and whether they’ll get to stay in the country.
I last wrote about them back in February, after a visit to South Florida. This is a follow-up, based on another trip to the area. This time, I got to sit down with one of the refugee caregivers—and the elderly woman for whom she cares. There’s even video you can watch.
They’re both lovely. And Esther—still sharp at 96—has quite a few things to say about politics. But they are also deeply concerned about the future. This article will give you a sense of why, and why it should matter to all of us.
I am a big believer in this kind of reporting, because it tethers my writing to reality—and because it lets you, the reader, understand what abstract policy means for real-life humans. But it’s a resource-intensive effort, from the travel to the time spent finding and interviewing people to the painstaking efforts of the video producer.
It’s only possible because of Bulwark+ members. If you subscribe already, thank you. And if you don't, I'll hope you will think about it, because the need for this kind of journalism has never been greater.
–Jonathan
Trump’s Deportation Agenda Awaits SCOTUS—With Grandma at Risk
The status of hundreds of thousand refugees will be determined in the coming days. Seniors dependent on caregivers may suffer tremendously for it.
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Palm Beach County, Florida—One of the biggest immigration stories in America right now is actually a story about America’s senior citizens and the refugees who care for them—and how those arrangements could be shattered, maybe within days if Donald Trump gets his way.
At issue is special protected status for more than 300,000 Haitian refugees whom Trump has wanted to expel ever since he became president the first time. Lower federal courts have blocked those efforts. But now the Supreme Court has the case. It is expected to issue some kind of ruling before it adjourns for the summer, likely late this week or early next.
Among those watching closely to see what happens are Maryse Balthazar, a home health care aide, and Esther Binbaum, a 96-year-old mother and grandmother for whom Maryse cares. Maryse came to the United States with her family in 2010—right around the time a devastating earthquake destroyed Haiti’s infrastructure, plunging the already troubled country further into a state of chaos, poverty, and danger.
The federal government responded as it has to such disasters in the past: It gave hundreds of thousands of Haitians fleeing their destroyed homes permission to stay and to work in the United States legally. But that was when Barack Obama was the president. Now it’s Trump, whose hostility to Haitians was clear even before he infamously (and absurdly) suggested during the 2024 campaign that Haitian refugees in Ohio were eating their neighbors’ dogs and cats.
The reality is that the vast majority of those hundreds of thousands of Haitians are not just law-abiding, hard-working, tax-paying residents. They are also filling essential roles in society, especially in the “care economy” where they make up a disproportionate share of nursing home staff and home health aides.
Nobody knows the value of that more than people like Esther. I recently got a chance to sit down with her and Maryse, whom readers of The Breakdown may recognize from a previous edition. As we sat in loungers on a screened porch, while a slowly rotating ceiling fan nudged the sticky Florida air, Esther talked about how close she’d grown to Maryse—and her bewilderment that Trump’s anti-immigration efforts would be so blind to the human costs.
“I’d be very sad, very sad for her and for her kids, and for the whole situation,” Esther told me, “and of course I’d be very sad to lose her.”
Whether that all comes to pass depends most immediately on how the Supreme Court weighs a series of interlocking legal arguments. They include a last-minute appeal based on recently discovered internal administration communications that—according to lawyers for the Haitians—proves the administration didn’t follow the law when trying to revoke the Haitians’ “temporary protected status.”
And then there is the possibility of congressional action, especially if the Court sides with the Trump administration. A House bill from Massachusetts Democrat Ayanna Pressley has passed, thanks to support from a handful of Republicans. Now it is sitting in the