Parole-program trial leaves Florida families uncertain about reuniting with loved ones

The last time Karen García saw her sister Mara seven years ago, she accompanied her sibling to dialysis treatments during a trip home to her native Venezuela. But months after the visit, Mara, a renal failure patient who needed a kidney transplant, died from an infection.

Her sister didn’t get the life-saving antibiotics she needed, said García, who has lived in the United States for over two decades and wasn’t able to go home and say goodbye to Mara.

“She didn’t have much of a future in Venezuela, but there was no way to get her out,” she said.

In early 2022 García’s father, Edgar, contracted COVID-19. García feared what could happen to him or her brother in Venezuela, where many still struggle to receive necessary medical attention and die as a result.

“I didn’t want to go through that pain and desperation again. The hospitals are a disaster,” she said. “But legally there was no way to bring them. And I thought, ‘There’s nothing more we can do.’”

Then in October, the Biden administration announced a parole process that allows Venezuelans to come to the United States on humanitarian grounds. Garcia quickly applied to sponsor her father and brother. They joined her in Orlando before Christmas.

García’s brother, José, now works in a Puerto Rican restaurant. Her father braved a relocation to a new country in his late 80s. Edgar reunited with a son he hadn’t seen in 20 years and spent time with three granddaughters he had never met. He’s gotten to know his newborn great-grandchild through Garcia’s late sister.

On the day he arrived, he scribbled a heart and wrote in black thin letters in his journal: “We arrived to the land of the free!!”

“He’s so happy about being here. He’s grateful for the mere fact of having water, electricity, air conditioning, food,” said García about her dad, “It’s a matter of survival. About giving him dignity.”

In January of this year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security expanded the humanitarian parole to also include Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua. Florida is home to almost 974,000 Cubans, nearly 342,000 Haitians, almost 105,000 Nicaraguans, and about 264,000 Venezuelans who were all born in their home countries, according to 2021 data from the US Census Bureau.

For many residents of the state — where three-quarters of its 4.6 million foreign-born population hail from Latin America and the Caribbean — the Biden administration program has opened a new avenue for people to bring loved ones from the four countries to the U.S.

Several Florida-based sponsors and beneficiaries told the Miami Herald that the new parole processes have expanded their previously limited, slow-moving options to reunite with family members, sometimes after years of separation, and offer them safety, medical care and economic opportunity.

For Garcia’s family — and for many applicants from countries like Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela, where American consular services have been extremely limited or nonexistent the last few years — the fact that the parole program application is fully online has been a way to circumvent the need to go to an in-country embassy.

But uncertainty looms over the program’s future as a federal trial wraps up in Texas. The governors of 21 Republican-led states, including Texas and Florida, sued to have the program declared unlawful. The states have argued to U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton that Homeland Security did not have the authority to create the program, which they say will irreparably harm their states by incurring costs to support the new arrivals.

A ruling from the judge is not expected until after late September.

García has no family left in Venezuela, but said she won’t stop supporting the program.

“I want all the people who are living elsewhere and have people who can bring them to live the blessing we are living right now, to have their people nearby and be able to provide for them. And knowing that if they get sick, they can get the help they need,” she said.

Homeland Security launched the parole programs to curb irregular migration from the four countries to the U.S.-Mexico border as well as the flow of Haitian and Cuban boats to South Florida and Puerto Rico’s shores.

More than 181,000 people from the four countries arrived in the United States as of the end of July through the program. Meanwhile, border authorities saw an 89% drop in weekly encounters with Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, and Haitians during the first six months of this year, according to agency statistics.

The government caps the amount of people who can come in through the program at 30,000 a month. But the humanitarian parole processes have generated high interest, and some who applied in January are waiting to hear back about their travel approvals. There were at least 1.5 million sponsorship applications, according to a CBS News report from May.

To kick off the application process, potential beneficiaries first must have a sponsor fill out paperwork committing to financially supporting them during the two-year parole. Then they must pass background checks and medical exams and submit information to Customs and Border Protection. The agency decides whether to approve the potential beneficiary for travel to the United States. When cleared for travel, parolees are responsible for their own airfare and must arrive by plane within 90 days. Once they arrive, CBP determines whether they can enter the country under the parole program, which also gives beneficiaries work eligibility. The Biden administration has not yet said what will happen to the lawful status of beneficiaries after the two-year period expires.

The U.S. government was expected to finish its closing statements in court on Friday. Talia Inlender, Deputy Director at UCLA’s Center for Immigration and Law Policy, one of the organizations representing sponsors in the case, told reporters shortly after trial ended on Thursday that they were defending the “freedom to welcome.”

Until the judge makes a ruling, sponsors and beneficiaries in Florida will live in uncertainty about what the case could mean for them and the future of the program.

Alisa Pereira, a 27-year-old beneficiary of the program living in Miami, is among them. Pereira received a scholarship from the prestigious University of Central America, a Jesuit-run private university in Managua, Nicaragua, where she graduated with a business administration degree. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega seized the university this month.

But despite her academic preparation, she could not find a job that could develop her career or a salary that could keep her afloat.

“I never wanted to risk my life and reach the border in an illegal way,” she said, “This is an opportunity I could have never imagined.”

Before the parole program, she said her options included waiting for her aunt, a U.S. citizen who has lived here for more than 30 years, to petition a green card for her mother. And then her mother could have in turn petitioned for Pereira. But green card processes can take years to complete, leaving people in limbo.

Pereira came to the U.S. in February, after her mother’s sister offered to sponsor and house her. Now in South Florida, she’s working in a children’s care center. Her aunt is helping her study English and get settled in the United States.

Pereira said that other people from her neighborhood and her city have also come to South Florida through relatives and friends. Now, Pereira and her relatives are evaluating whether her parents and her brother could come to the U.S. through the parole program too.

“I worry for Nicaragua, my friends and my family. I hope to God I can reunite with them through this program,” she said. “And I hope it happens in the not too distant future.”

But the specter of the federal court case in Texas looms large over Pereira’s hopes to bring her immediate family.

“For me, this lawsuit could end the possibility of reuniting with my family in this free country. And for me, it means uncertainty, because I don’t know what will happen to me if this program ends,” she said.

Gerard Straub and his wife, Dr. Stéphanie Jean-Louis Straub, 34, met at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, after she had been forced to leave her hospital job just outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti, because of gangs blocking the roads. She asked Straub for a job at Santa Chiara Children’s Center, the orphanage he runs out of Haiti’s capital. Straub had a couple of nurses, but he needed a doctor. She began to work three nights a week.

Shortly after, Gerard contracted a serious case of COVID-19 that left him bedridden. A group of Missionaries of Charity, nuns who follow Mother Theresa, arranged oxygen for him.

“I could hardly move, I could hardly breathe, and I said, well this is it, But I kind of said to God, “Well, I’m ready, but what about the children?” said Gerard Straub, who is 76.

Jean-Louis Straub was able to find doctors and nursed Straub back to health. The pair slowly became friends and married in December 2021. Now they live together in the orphanage, taking care of 45 children and teenagers with the support of a staff of 40. Most of the kids are from Cité Soleil, the largest slum in Haiti.

“It’s this oasis of peace and love in the middle of a sea of complete despair,” said Straub. “We teach the kids non-violence.”

Straub survived an abduction attempt in January. But despite the violence and insecurity that plague Port-au-Prince, the couple doesn’t want to leave. They have dozens of children to take care of. The Haitian government gave him custody of seven children who now have his last name, he said. They just built a new dorm for the older girls and are in the process of fundraising for construction a new schoolhouse for their center because it’s too dangerous to leave.

But he spends one week in the U.S each month to handle work for the orphanage and to take care of his medical needs. He wants his wife to be able to travel with him so she can offer him the support he needs and so they can resolve their immigration woes.

But when they went to the U.S. Embassy in Haiti to petition for a tourist visa so Jean-Louis Straub could come with him to Fort Pierce, it was closed because of gang violence, said Straub.

“I don’t want to leave Haiti forever... I want to go back and forth with my husband, ” said Jean-Louis Straub.

Straub and his wife completed the application process for Jean-Louis Straub’s parole in February. But they still haven’t heard from the federal government about when she will receive her approval to travel to the U.S.

“We just want to stay unified, stay together,” said Straub. “I don’t know what we would do. It would be devastating if this thing is canceled.”