Rubén Rosario: Next week, they may have to leave behind their kids and the place they love

March 24-- Mar. 24--The nerve of Janet Sonie of St. Paul, who was allowed to come here "temporarily" 19 years ago to escape violence in her then-civil-war-torn nation of Liberia.

She, and many others like her, should have stayed locked in a closet without human interaction or grabbed a seat at the airport terminal upon arriving and not left it until conditions in her country stabilized and she was sent back. She should not have been allowed to work, plant any roots or fall in love under the "Temporary Protected Status" law that granted her and hundreds of other desperate Liberians entry.

But the reprieve gave her temporary permission and legal protection to live and work here throughout the years and only that -- no pathway to permanent residency, no public assistance, let alone citizenship.

So, given that she is human, Sonie went ahead and lived her life. She fell in love. She found a job cleaning rooms and toilets at Twin Cities-area hotels a few months after arriving here. It's a job she is grateful for and continues to do. As a single mother, she has raised her two U.S.-born kids, Jennifer and Nicholas Brewer, ages 15 and 17, both students at St. Paul's Johnson High School, the best she could. She hopes they will one day attend college and build a better life for themselves. You know, the American Dream, everyone's dream.

With the meager income she gets, Sonie somehow squirrels away a few bucks every month to send back to her parents and two siblings.

"Things are still bad over there, lots of crime, no one is working, so it helps for them to be able to buy food and help pay for hospital bills," the 37-year-old St. Paul resident explained. "My father is not doing well. He is going blind and has diabetes."

Come next Sunday, Sonie will either be forced to self-deport to Liberia and take her children with her, leave them here and return alone, or reluctantly join the estimated millions of unauthorized immigrants who toil in the nation's shadow economy.

March 31 is the deadline the Trump administration set last year for ending the "Deferred Enforced Departure" status for the estimated 4,000 Liberians in the nation affected by the decision. Liberian nationals were moved from Temporary Protected Status to DED during the Bush administration in 2007.

The TPS law was passed in 1990 to provide temporary relocation to people whose home countries were ravaged by war or natural disasters. Deadlines were routinely extended over the years under both Republican and Democratic administrations. That ended when President Donald Trump decided last year to wipe out Deferred Enforced Departure protections for Liberians. He also ordered enforcement of expired TPS protections for immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras and eight other South American, African and Middle Eastern nations.

The elimination of TPS for Honduras and other countries, which could affect thousands of immigrants, many of them living here for decades, is being challenged in federal court.

But the affected Liberians living in Minnesota, who make up a disproportionate number of health care workers at hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities in the Twin Cities metro area, have no apparent court relief. Deferred Enforced Departure, unlike Temporary Protected Status, is not a law but a presidential discretion covered by executive privilege. As such, it is immune from statutory challenge.

Nevertheless, a federal lawsuit was filed in Boston last week on behalf of various advocacy groups and 15 Liberian immigrants raising U.S.-born children who allege Trump's decision will separate families, is inherently racist and violates the due process and equal protection clauses governed by the U.S. Constitution.

Minnesota's Liberian diaspora community is among the largest in the nation, if not the world. There are an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 people of Liberian descent living here, and untold hundreds affected by the DED phase-out. They are a part of the 10 percent of foreign-born nationals who make up Minnesota's labor force, particularly in the health care industry.

An exodus of such workers "will be significant," Nicole Mattson, administrator for the Good Samaritan Society specialty care facility in Robbinsdale, informed me in an email.

She noted that Care Providers of Minnesota estimated that 6 percent of all long-term-care workers in the metro area are Liberian.

"We value these workers; they've been trained and educated for our positions and they've been committed to our organizations for years," Mattson added. "We simply cannot afford to lose their talent. As a profession we are already facing critical workforce shortages, to potentially have 6 to 25 percent of our workforce leave us would be devastating," she added. "Not only do I feel that it's both morally and ethically wrong to force these people to leave a place they call home, it makes no business or economic sense whatsoever."

Isabella Wreh-Fofana, also of St. Paul, who reluctantly acknowledged to me she is in her 50s, is one such worker. Along with her husband and her then-7-year-old chronically ill son, Wreh-Fofana left Liberia in 2002 under the TPS program to escape a bloody conflict that claimed her father's life.

She has worked as a nursing assistant for the past 15 years. Her husband, Lusienie, works as a custodian. Her son, L.Nyensuathee, 24, diagnosed here in Minnesota with a serious cardiac condition, is facing a fifth heart-related surgery in several months.

All three face deportation if next week's deadline goes into effect. If her son goes back, "he will surely die," she said, because of a lack of medical care resources.

Like Sonie, she has heard Liberia, though no longer in civil war conflict, is still ravaged by violent crime and high unemployment. Like Sonie, she sends what she can to help out family members, including the children of a younger sister who she believes died of stress, trauma and a broken heart after rebels murdered their father and prevented her from burying him. Cash remittances from the Liberian community here and elsewhere account for nearly 30 percent of that nation's gross domestic product, according to the most recent data from the World Bank.

Wreh-Fofana hopes against hope that with the stroke of a pen, Trump may decide to give them another and perhaps more permanent reprieve before next week's deadline.

"We feel like we are home in America," she said. "I have faith that God is going to make a way here out of nowhere."

Trump, do the right thing.

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