In an ideal world, Michelle would be a nurse helping patients in her homeland, Haiti. Gangs shattered those dreams when she narrowly escaped a kidnapping attempt while walking to her Port-au-Prince nursing school in 2022.

Terrified, Michelle sought safety in the countryside. She fled to Miami less than a year later through a Biden-era humanitarian parole program known as CHNV that allowed over half a million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to live and work in the United States for two years. She found peace in South Florida, enrolling in English classes and working as a nursing assistant.

After the Trump administration abruptly decided to end all individual CHNV paroles by April 24, a federal judge blocked the move. But Michelle’s deportation protection is set to expire this June, when her two-year parole runs out.

Michelle, 36, who asked to be identified only by her first name because she fears for her life again, doesn’t know what she will do next. She doesn’t have a plan because she didn’t think she would need one. She’s evaluating her options, including asking for asylum.

The stress Michelle feels is so overwhelming, she says, it makes her sick. As she recounted her story, she doubled over in anguish and laid her head on her hands. She’s only sure of one thing: She will not go back to Haiti. If she returns now — with violent gangs having killed thousands and taken over most of the capital — she is sure she will not survive.

“It’s suicidal,” she said. “You found safety somewhere else, and now you’re forced into the arms of the bandits.”

‘Self-deportations’

Since his first day in the White House, President Donald Trump has been pushing immigrants into legal and logistical corners to force what his agencies call “self-deportations.” His administration has moved to strip hundreds of thousands of people who are in the U.S. legally of their right to be here, and launched ads encouraging undocumented immigrants to go back on their own to their home countries rather than face being sent to detention centers and then deported.

A phone app known as CBPOne — originally created by the Biden administration for immigrants to use to make appointments to cross the border into the U.S. — has been modified so immigrants who decide to leave the U.S. on their own can let immigration authorities know.

“President Trump has a clear message: if you are here illegally, we will find you and deport you. You will never return. But if you leave now, you may have an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American Dream,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement last month.

South Florida immigrants, lawyers and community leaders said that the mass deportation efforts have left millions of immigrants — including more than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans facing the early end of the CHNV program — grappling with an agonizing choice: to leave the U.S. voluntarily or risk the wrath of the immigration system.

Many immigrants are opting to risk detention and deportation, even as the Trump administration narrows their pathways to stay. For now, they say they prefer to take their chances in the United States than face imminent threats to their livelihoods — and lives — in their home countries.

“They don’t want to go back. They are still fighting their case,” said John De La Vega, a Miami immigration lawyer who noted that the vast majority of his clients are not considering, for now, voluntary departure.

Ad blitz

In mid-March, Homeland Security launched a multimillion-dollar ad blitz warning undocumented immigrants the government would “hunt” them down, pushing them to leave voluntarily and discouraging those in other countries from coming to the U.S.

The Trump administration has moved to revoke immigration paroles for hundreds of thousands of people who came under CHNV and through the U.S.-Mexico border using the CBPOne app. Officials have also revoked deportation protections and work permits under the program known as temporary protected status for about 350,000 Venezuelans and rolled back an 18-month TPS extension for more than 500,000 Haitians.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has stopped processing applications for green cards, asylum requests, TPS and other benefits for CHNV beneficiaries, leaving them for now in limbo. Last week The New York Times reported that the Trump administration was taking away Social Security numbers from noncitizens who had lawfully obtained them as a way to cut them off from critical financial services, like bank accounts.

So far, more than 5,000 people have left the country on their own using the phone app, according to DHS data that Fox News reported. Some immigrants who have temporary legal status feel the Trump administration has betrayed them, even though they acknowledge that their stays in the U.S. always had a time limit.

“The government made me believe I was legal. Now the government is reversing it to make me illegal,” said Harold Renard, a 55-year-old Haitian man who fled Haiti after gang members took over his farmland in 2022.

Since coming in July 2023 to Miami through the CHNV program, he has been taking English classes and working at a bakery. For now, Renard plans to stay in the U.S. His two-year parole is set to run out later this summer, and he’s considering other options such as filing for asylum. But he fears the United States, which he has long viewed as a protector of the vulnerable, will send him in handcuffs back to Haiti, where extreme gang violence is rampant.

“If you cut open my heart, you’d see the American in me. It was a victory living here in the United States,” Renard said. “What hurts me the most in my heart is when I learned that Americans do not want Haitians to stay.”

There are lawsuits in courts challenging the Trump administration’s decisions to end TPS for Venezuela and Haiti. A judge in California has kept TPS protections for Venezuelans in place. Another judge on Monday stopped the federal government from prematurely stripping CHNV beneficiaries from their immigration paroles.

Many immigrants are praying for favorable court rulings.

Orlando Valencillos, 71, who fled Venezuela and was living in Chile, came with his wife to the U.S. in August 2024, after their daughter brought them under the CHNV program. They first settled in Hialeah and then moved to Homestead. In South Florida, Valencillos was finally able to receive treatment for thyroid and prostate issues.

In Venezuela, where health services are scarce, they barely survived before fleeing to Chile four years ago, where he said they faced hardship even though their daughter supported them from the U.S. Filled with uncertainty, he now wonders if federal judges will ultimately protect him and his wife.

His parole is scheduled to run out in August 2026. But it’s unclear whether immigration authorities will process the couple’s application for any immigration relief, given the Trump-mandated pause.

“We can’t go back to Venezuela. We are considering other avenues to remain in the U.S..” he said. “We barely survived. Every day it gets worse.”

‘I am not welcome’

Kenny Francois, the CEO of LETS Community Center in Miami Gardens, said that even though the administration has moved to end TPS and there is uncertainty about pending federal litigation, Haitian migrants continue to pay fees to renew their status. The sentiment is so common, Francois stopped trying to convince people to save their time and money.

“I cannot take away the only little hope they have left,” Francois said. “I tell them, do what you have to do. Stay out of trouble. It’s in God’s hands.”

Francois is organizing a gala in August to raise money to support Haitians who are forced to leave the U.S. They have told him that they are considering going “anywhere but Haiti” — including Canada, which has a large French-speaking population. They are also mulling whether to move to Brazil or Chile, where many who previously lived there say they endured extreme racism.

“They’ve gone through so much ... When will they have a break? They thought, ‘This is it.’ Then boom, they have to face the same thing,” Francois said. “They thought being in America was the last stop. But it’s not over.”

The uncertainty makes the decision to stay or leave even more difficult for immigrants. Lawyers said the aim of immigration authorities is to encourage immigrants to leave on their own terms, saving the government the exhaustive resources needed to carry out arrests, detentions and deportations.

Wilfredo Allen, a veteran Miami immigration lawyer, said one of his clients, a man in his mid-30s, has decided to return on his own to Nicaragua to reunite with his wife and children. His two-year CHNV parole is set to expire in May.

His family could try to come to the U.S., but “there’s no guarantee that they could ever win asylum. It’s a hard road,” Allen said.

Allen noted that deportation officers have encouraged some of his clients who are in detention to go back to their home countries. But he noted that it will likely be difficult to come back lawfully at some future date under Trump.

Some, like a TPS holder in his 50s who asked that his name not to be used, don’t want to wait around for the courts to decide and then risk detention. After 14 years in the United States, he has decided to depart for Venezuela, where he was born. The man asked not to be identified because he fears the Trump administration may single him out or persecute him for speaking out.

The TPS beneficiary, who works in technology at a large arts venue, is mourning a collaborative project he was planning to work on with a well-known dance choreographer in Miami. And he is coming to terms with the fact that he will have to leave behind the state-of-the-art video projection installation he programmed and installed where he works.

He came to the U.S. to work on his career and has found great success. TPS changed his life, he told the Herald. But the Venezuelan man is not ready to spend an indefinite amount of time in an immigration detention facility or be shipped off without due process to a mega prison El Salvador, where the U.S. government has sent some of his compatriots whom the administration accuses of being members of the feared Tren de Aragua gang.

“I don’t feel that I am welcome,” he said.

‘Hoping they’ll give people a chance’

Lilian Bustos, a 42-year-old mom from Nicaragua, is among those who entered the U.S. through the CHNV program. Like countless others, she envisioned the United States as a place where her dreams could come true. She has always wished to send her daughters, 10 and 16, to a private university.

In August 2023 the family flew from Managua to start their new life in Miami. Bustos enrolled her daughters in a local public school, where they started learning English and making friends. She found work as a house cleaner.

Her parole is set to end in August 2025. For now, the American life she envisioned as her daughters’ pathway to higher education has been upended. A devout Catholic who does not want to break the law, she plans on returning to Nicaragua. She does not want to give up her tourist visa or risk detention.

Still, she hopes and prays there might be some other way to legally remain.

“I like the system. And there’s a lot of work, so I can contribute a good development to my family in Nicaragua,” she said. “I’m waiting, hoping they’ll give people a chance.”

_____

©2025 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.