Chef Creole owner Wilkinson Sejour, a Haitian American who runs seven Miami restaurants, says the end of Haiti TPS is already costing him workers and driving up his labor costs, and that he regrets his vote.
Wilkinson Sejour built one of Miami’s best-known Haitian restaurant brands over the decades. Now that Temporary Protected Status for Haiti has been terminated, he is watching the workers who help run it leave — and preparing for the higher costs that will follow.
Sejour, the Haitian American owner of the seven Chef Creole locations across Miami, said he recently lost four employees as the end of TPS protections took hold. His account puts a concrete face on a warning that business owners, economists, and lawmakers have made for months: that removing hundreds of thousands of Haitian workers would ripple through the industries that depend on them.
Sejour said he tried to reassure his employees when a short extension was announced, and that they told him it was not enough.
“I said, ‘Look, they extended it for three more days,'” Sejour recalled. “They said, ‘Boss, the way this administration is doing business, they don’t care about the rule of law. They just care about their agenda. I’m not going to be embarrassed. I’m not going to be looking like a criminal in front of people,’ so they’re out of here. They’re gone.”
As a Haitian American, Sejour said he understands why they came to the United States, and why sending them back makes no sense to him with Haiti gripped by violence and instability. He pointed to the contradiction that has become central to the debate over Haiti TPS.
“How do you get sent back to a country that the American Embassy is saying, ‘Do not go over there?'” Sejour said. “This is very contradictory. I don’t understand it.”
Sejour said he is now hiring to replace the workers he lost, and bracing for what the churn will do to his margins.
“My cost of labor is supposed to be at 23½%, and now it’s going to go to 27% or maybe 28%,” he said. “So my net profit is going to be smaller. How am I going to mitigate that? My prices on my goods are going to have to go up. Everyone is going to feel it.”
That last point — that the cost does not stop at the business owner — is the argument advocates and some Republican officials have made in urging Congress to preserve the protection. The workforce losses reach restaurants, nursing homes, construction, and other sectors, and the expense of replacing experienced workers tends to be passed on to customers.
Sejour’s situation is unfolding as faith leaders and lawmakers press for a legislative solution.
Archbishop of Miami Thomas Wenski recently returned from Washington, where he lobbied senators to pass the House bill that would extend TPS protections for Haitian nationals for three more years. He said he found little optimism, but pressed the case anyway.
“They were not very optimistic about the possibilities of the Senate passing the bill that was referred to them from the House,” Wenski said. “But I told them, I said, ‘Listen, that bill that came out of the House of Representatives on a discharge petition was a minor miracle. And we’re here to ask them to help make a major miracle.'”
The bill Wenski referred to, H.R. 1689, passed the House in April after Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley forced a floor vote through a discharge petition. Its companion in the Senate, S. 4814, was blocked on July 22 when a single Republican senator objected to a unanimous consent attempt to pass it. The measure remains on the Senate calendar, but it would now have to move through regular order — a far steeper climb.
Meanwhile, the termination itself is final. TPS for Haiti ended effective July 27, after the Supreme Court cleared the administration to proceed, and the work authorization tied to it has lapsed for those who held it.
For Sejour, the politics have become personal. Like a growing number of business owners who supported the current administration, he said the enforcement drive has landed in a way he did not anticipate — and that he would not vote the same way again.
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Sources: Local 10 News (WPLG)
Editorial Disclaimer: This article was originally written in English. Other language versions are produced using AI translation software, and errors are possible — the English version is authoritative. CTN also uses AI to convert text into audio.
