Loss of work authorization sows confusion for thousands of Haitian immigrants and their US employers

KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) — For more than a month, Bobby Kuchinsky arrived at his restaurant each morning worried about whether he still had enough staff or if this might be the last shift for some of his Haitian workers, who have spent over a decade as cooks, busboys and oyster shuckers.

On Tuesday, he suspended six of them after they lost authorization to work in the U.S.

Kuchinsky and thousands of other businesses owners and managers are living in a state of constant uncertainty because confusion clouds the status of work permits for Haitian employees with Temporary Protected Status, better known as TPS.

As part of its crackdown on legal and illegal immigration, the Trump administration terminated TPS for about 1 million people from more than a dozen countries, including 350,000 Haitians who have been living and working legally in the U.S. since 2010. The termination, which exposed them to deportation, was challenged in district courts. On June 25, the Supreme Court sided with the government, allowing the TPS program to end.

The cases went back to the lower courts, which generally take 32 days to announce their decisions following the high court's recommendations. In the meantime, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, extended the Haitians' work permits. The agency usually acted on the same day that the permits expired and offered extensions of only a few days, creating confusion and desperation among employers and the Haitian community.

Then on Monday, the work permits were not extended, and fear mounted — not only due to the loss of jobs but also because of the potential for arrest and deportation to one of the poorest and most violent countries in the Western Hemisphere.

Almost 1.5 million people have been displaced because of gang violence in Haiti, where more than half of the country’s nearly 12 million inhabitants need humanitarian aid. More than 2,300 people have been killed and more than 1,100 injured since January, according to the United Nations.

Citizenship and Immigration Services did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press requesting clarification on the validity of work permits.

In a written statement to AP, the Department of Homeland Security said TPS was created to be a temporary program, and the agency encouraged Haitians to request a $2,600 check to buy a “free flight home."

“It’s closing time, which means you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here," the DHS statement said.

As he did every morning, Kuchinsky, general manager of the Half Shell Raw Bar in Key West, logged onto the government website Tuesday to verify the work permits of six Haitian employees who were TPS beneficiaries. This time he learned their permits were no longer valid.

“I told them they are suspended,” he said after meeting with his employees. “It was horrible. It wasn't fun ... they had fear in their face, tears in their eyes.”

The manager, who has been working at the restaurant for more than 35 years, said he would keep checking the website for any changes. He said he decided to suspend the employees because it is easier than rehiring them, should they be allowed to work again at some point.

Before they left, he handed them a package containing information about their rights and the documents they would need in the event of being detained. He plans to pay them severance on Friday, if nothing changes.

Miriam Singer, CEO at Jewish Community Services of South Florida, said the organization advised 18 employees that they were no longer eligible to work.

“It’s been a very hard process,” Singer said. “They are devastated and without a path forward for caring for themselves and their families.” The Haitian workers provided home care to elderly Holocaust survivors.

Robert Dominguez, associate general counsel for Engage PEO, a human resources consultancy, said TPS has been “front of mind” for many businesses. He said it’s hard for employers to keep up with the government's changes, particularly in industries such as construction, hospitality and long-term care, which rely on workers from outside the U.S.

“You just see change after change. You just see a bunch of alerts,” Dominguez says. “I don’t think it’s clear-cut for most employers.”

Katie Smith Sloan, CEO of LeadingAge, which represents nonprofit long-term care homes, said member facilities have been on edge.

“These providers and the patients themselves are dealing with a ton of uncertainty for months and months,” she said. “And so now it all feels like it’s about to come to a head.”

For some of the TPS holders, returning to Haiti is a possible death sentence.

One of the workers at the Half Shell said he left Haiti because of gang violence, arrived at the U.S. in 2016, got a work permit a few months later and requested TPS in 2020. Since then, he has been working in the restaurant industry, washing dishes.

“Each day feels like the last day,” said the 62-year-old man, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear that he could be detained. “I don’t know how I’m going to live — pay the rent, buy food — if I don’t work.”

The man, who rents a room in a mobile home, said he sends about $550 a month to his wife and two brothers in Haiti. But he panics just thinking of going back there.

“I am afraid of being detained, deported, and sent back to Haiti — of being killed there,” he said in a soft voice, with his gaze cast downward.

His two adult sons, who also live in the U.S, were beneficiaries of TPS and are seeking asylum, he said.

Kuchinsky said he is also concerned about 19 of his employees with pending asylum cases. The government has also targeted asylum seekers, and many have been detained in Key West, a tourist destination at the southern tip of the United States, he noted.

Among them is Bendy Gabriel, who worked in rice fields and left Haiti in 2017 after receiving death threats. He first traveled to Chile, where he worked in construction, but after three years he moved to the United States because he was not earning enough money to send to his family in Haiti.

Gabriel, his wife and then 5-year-old son arrived in the U.S. in December 2021 and five months later requested asylum.

But the process was slow, and they applied for TPS too. Now that TPS is over, he said he can continue working until his permit expires in 2030, although he does not feel safe.

“Some days I’m afraid. If immigration officers catch me and take me back to my country, they’ll kill me when I get there,” the 36-year-old man said.

Gabriel, who has a 4-year-old son who was born in the U.S., works as a cook at the Half Shell and another restaurant. He earns around $5,000 a month, enough to pay $2,400 in rent, buy food, and send at least $300 a month to his father in Haiti.

“If we lose our jobs, it doesn’t just affect us,” he said. “How are we going to manage to send money to our families in Haiti so they can eat?”

Sedensky reported from New York.

An employee bussing tables, left, walks past diners as he works inside Half Shell Raw Bar, Friday, July 24, 2026, in Key West, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

A Haitian worker with Temporary Protected Status busses tables at Half Shell Raw Bar, Friday, July 24, 2026, in Key West, Fla.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

A Haitian worker with Temporary Protected Status cleans and busses tables at Half Shell Raw Bar, Friday, July 24, 2026, in Key West, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Bobby Kuchinsky, general manager of Half Shell Raw Bar, poses for a portrait inside his restaurant, Saturday, July 25, 2026, in Key West, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

STARKE, Fla. (AP) — Florida on Tuesday became the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, putting to death an 80-year-old man who was the second-oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern U.S. history.

Hours earlier, the state executed a former police officer convicted of the killing of a young girl.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has made Florida's death chamber the nation’s busiest at the end of his final term, saying too many families have waited too long to see justice. The lethal injections just hours apart were the first nearly back-to-back executions since Arkansas put two men to death three hours apart in 2017.

DeSantis, who has the authority under Florida law to set execution dates, decided earlier this month to carry out both executions on the same day.

Nationwide, the use of the death penalty had been declining for two decades, but that number has ticked up behind the increased pace in Florida. Since 2025 began, Florida has carried out nearly half the state executions across the country.

Dominick Anthony Occhicone, the octogenarian, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke following a three-drug injection. His execution came shortly less than five hours after the ex-police officer, James Aren Duckett, 68, received a lethal dose in the same death chamber.

Occhicone, who was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986, is the oldest prisoner executed in Florida’s history since modern record-keeping began a century ago. Nationwide, an older inmate, 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr., received a lethal injection in Alabama in 2018 for a wave of mail bombs in 1989 that killed a federal judge and wounded a Black civil rights attorney.

Earlier Tuesday afternoon, Duckett became the 11th inmate executed by the state of Florida this year. He was convicted of raping and drowning 11-year-old Teresa McAbee while he was working as a police officer in central Florida in 1987.

Duckett declined to make a final statement, responding “no sir” when asked and showing no response when the prison warden shook him and shouted his name minutes into his execution. He was pronounced dead at 1:19 p.m.

Afterward, the girl's family members said they had suffered for decades.

“I waited nearly 40 years to have him dead,” Dorthy Tula, the victim's mother, said before breaking down.

“This man took advantage of his badge,” said Tracy Mcfall-Buskirk, the girl's cousin.

Nationwide, a total of 19 executions, including Tuesday's, have been carried out so far this year. Florida has conducted 12 executions to date in 2026 — more than all other states combined.

DeSantis, who leaves office in January, oversaw a record 19 executions last year, more in a single year than any other Florida governor since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the U.S. in 1976.

Overall, Florida now has executed 30 people since the beginning of 2025 while the rest of the U.S. states combined have carried out 35 executions over the same period. Another execution in Florida is set for August.

Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty recently urged DeSantis to halt both executions as an “unprecedented escalation” of Florida’s use of the death penalty.

“Florida continues to expand the use of capital punishment, despite mounting evidence that it is not what Floridians want," said the group's executive director, Grace Hanna.

DeSantis hasn’t said why he scheduled two executions hours apart. And he has rarely commented on the pace of executions, previously noting some on death row had committed crimes as far back as the 1980s.

“Justice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly," the governor said last year.

Just before Duckett was scheduled to be executed in March, the Florida Supreme Court issued a stay to allow for DNA testing of old evidence. The results were inconclusive, meaning they did not exonerate Duckett or definitively connect him to the crime. Judges have allowed the jury verdict to stand.

When Occhicone’s death warrant was signed last month, his was the only execution scheduled for Tuesday. But after the Florida Supreme Court removed Duckett’s stay on July 8, DeSantis signed a new death warrant and added Duckett to Occhicone’s execution date. Florida Department of Corrections records show multiple executions on a single day were more common in the past, the last being in 1964.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied last appeals from both men Tuesday and the Florida Supreme Court last week.

Duckett’s attorneys had claimed his innocence and challenged the state’s handling of DNA evidence.

Occhicone’s attorneys said age-related ailments including kidney and prostate problems could make his execution especially painful, constituting cruel and unusual punishment.

All Florida executions are by injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

Associated Press reporter John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.

This combo from photos provided by Florida Department of Corrections shows from left, James Aren Duckett and Dominick Anthony Occhicone. (Florida Department of Corrections via AP)

FILE - Clouds hover over the entrance of the Florida State Prison in Starke, Fla., Aug. 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Curt Anderson, file)