In the hours since the Supreme Court announced it would allow the Trump administration to end temporary protected status for immigrants from Haiti and Syria, the potential consequences have ricocheted through American communities.

Panic and chaos have set in. Advocacy and aid groups have been inundated with requests for help, as families try to figure out options. Without further intervention from lower courts, about 400,000 Haitians and Syrians, or about a third of the 1.3 million total people with TPS, will have just about three months before they are eligible for deportation — three months to figure out what to do with the lives they have built in the United States, whether to leave behind U.S.-born children or bring them along to dangerous nations, and whether there is any mechanism by which they could try to stay.

But the impact will also be felt by the nation as a whole.

“The future of immigrants is fundamentally connected to the future of care in our country,” said Haeyoung Yoon, the vice president of policy and advocacy at the National Domestic Workers Alliance.

There are at least 740,000 TPS holders in the U.S. workforce, with many holding jobs in critical fields like healthcare, childcare and elder care, an NDWA report found in May. More than 20% of Haitians in the nation work in healthcare, according to Care for Seniors, Care for America. Many TPS holders, Yoon said, are in the “direct care” sector, like those who provide long-term care services to people with disabilities and the elderly. “Immigrant care workers play a foundational role in caregiving in our country,” Yoon said, and a “significant portion” are TPS holders.

These fields are already facing a massive workforce shortage, which will only be exacerbated by the loss of a swath of workers. An April 2026 study by MIT researchers found that higher rates of immigration in a community, particularly among female immigrants, corresponded with an increase in the time registered nurses spent with elderly patients.

“When immigration rises in a city, it significantly increases the health care workforce,” economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the co-authors of the study, told MIT News.

Nor will they be easy to replace once they are gone.

“Agencies, providers who hire workers, they need to backfill positions. And it’s really hard to find care workers,” Yoon said, citing low wages and high turnover as factors that contribute to the problem.

The downstream effects could hit the labor market as a whole.

“Families will be left without their trusted caregivers, who they rely on to care for their children, their aging parents,” Yoon said. “What that means is that families are going to need to shoulder this enormous caregiving responsibility. We also know that in our society, women disproportionately wear their caregiving responsibilities, and some may be forced out of the labor force to deal with their caregiving responsibilities.”

Many other essential industries are at risk of losing a massive number of their workers.

“[TPS] recipients include thousands of our union members from Boston to Miami who maintain everything from airports to downtown offices, plus countless others working in senior care, childcare, construction, food service, and more,” Manny Pastreich, president of 32BJ of the Service Employee’s International Union, said in a statement “We cannot overturn the court’s unjustifiable decision, but we must find ways to address its devastating effects.”

Data from the criminal and immigration reform group Fwd.US shows that TPS holders contribute over $29 billion annually to the American economy, and that they pay almost $8 billion in federal, payroll, state and local taxes. Haitian and Syrian TPS holders alone contribute $4.4 billion to the U.S. economy annually, according to Public Rights Project.

In the Republican stronghold of Florida, Public Rights Project founder Jill Habig noted that TPS holders paid $300 million in federal taxes last year and $306 million in state and local taxes.

“Local governments will experience the fallout as a community crisis,” she said in a statement. “Families will be separated, local economies will take a hit and people will be forced back to countries in the grip of violence, instability and humanitarian collapse. The human cost will be felt all across America.”

Some cities may be decimated if TPS holders are forced to leave the U.S. Haitians make up about 20-25% of the population in Springfield, Ohio, for example. At least 10 businesses opened by Haitian immigrants have made significant contributions to the local economy, according to the Springfield website. The site further boasts that Haitian immigration has helped the city create “nearly 8,000 new jobs, [and] retained another 11,900” since 2012.

“We are a city that had been in decline for 50 years, when Haitians arrived, that was the first time we grew in a half a century,” Carl Ruby, a Springfield pastor, said Thursday on a press call. “Haitians, who are now at risk for deportation and are not able to work effectively immediately…that’s going to hurt businesses in Springfield. It’s going to lead to economic decline.”

Nathalie Baptiste contributed reporting.

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