For more than a year, Robert spent his days getting seniors dressed, taking their vital signs and helping them eat at Edgewood LifeCare Community in North Andover.
But one day in May, that changed. A human resources officer said his work permit was no longer valid; he would be laid off.
“When they said, ‘you won’t be able to work,’ I’m like, my God. I cried. Because I had a good relationship with the clients and they love me so much. They love me so much because I took good care of them,” said Robert in a phone interview. GBH News agreed to use only his first name due to his fears of deportation.
Robert is one of thousands of health and nursing home workers in Massachusetts who has lost or is at risk of losing their employment due to the Trump administration terminating their legal status.
“We are starting to see an already nervous health care industry lose key staff,” said Jeff Thielman, CEO of International Institute of New England, which provides workforce training for many immigrants.
Parole for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans launched in 2022 as a path for immigrants from specific countries to flee persecution, environmental disasters, and economic instability. They applied for the program from their home countries with the help of a U.S. sponsor, were vetted, and allowed to live and work in the U.S. for two years at a time.
The Trump administration ended the CHNV program and moved up the dates the immigrants were told they stay in the U.S. until. After a Supreme Court decision reversed a temporary injunction barring the move, more than half a million immigrants across the country immediately lost their legal status, effectively becoming undocumented. While the injunction is off the books, the deeper legal issue could still eventually be decided in parolees’ favor as arguments play out in lower courts.
‘Something so out of our control’
International Institute of New England prepares refugees and immigrants of varying statuses for employment, including through a certified nursing assistant training program with Middlesex Community College. They’ve trained more than 140 CNAs since 2018. Nursing homes, rehab centers, hospitals and patients at home all need caregivers, and the industry is already tight on staff. Immigrants have filled key roles, and the industry has been a lifeline for them. And advocates like Thielman say they’ve brought what’s needed to the table.
“They’ve followed all the rules — they got trained in a new profession, they went into the workforce in a workforce that needs them, and they’ve now lost their jobs,” said Thielman. “So it is a very unfair system.”
In Massachusetts, one in four health care workers are immigrants, according to the Leah Zallman Center for Immigrant Health Research. The share is even higher for home health aides, which hada 46% foreign-born workforce even before the influx of immigrants to the state between 2022 to 2024. The problem is heightened by agrowing need for the health care and home care workers to support aging seniors.
Of the thousands of personal care attendants represented by the 1199SEIU union, 500 have been recently terminated due to changes in their immigration status. That includes many who came to the U.S. through the CHNV parole program.
Local employers like Tribute Home Care are starting to see the impact of Trump’s immigration policies. The group recently had to lay off nine Haitian caregivers who had parole through the CHNV program.
Tribute Home Care CEO John Sneath said the agency was first alerted when a caregiver brought in a “very technical letter” saying he could no longer work, and needed to return to Haiti.
“We didn’t frankly know what to do because we knew that we had others under that program,” he said. Shortly after, the Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify system alerted Tribute that anyone with CHNV parole status was no longer allowed to work. Sneath said there was no guidance on how and when to lay off staff, and the company struggled to determine if it was even allowed to pay severance.
“The folks that managed our caregivers and had to make the termination calls were literally in tears and struggling to go on with their day because this is something so out of our control,” said Regina McNally, Director of People & Culture at Tribute.
She said the company has about 100 senior clients in Massachusetts, with the average client needing about 100 hours of care weekly. That work is stretched across just 200 or so caregivers.
Demand for home-based care is higher than ever, with many people wanting services in the comfort of their residences.
But that will be harder with fewer people working in the industry, and could lead to dangerous and expensive situations, said Jake Krilovich, executive director of Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts, a trade association working with more than 200 home care providers.
“[Short staffing] puts people at risk from falls or complications from chronic disease, which would then make them have an event that they would have to go into a facility,” he said “From a policy perspective, it strains our health care system. It is more costly when people are admitted to the hospital.”
The Trump administration stands by its decision to terminate the program, despite any impact on the impact to the health and home care industries. “The Biden administration’s reckless CHNV program allowed hundreds of thousands of unvetted aliens to circumvent the traditional parole process,” said US Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Matthew Tragesser. He called the program “massively abused” and urged impacted immigrants to self-deport if they haven’t secured lawful status.
‘It’s still my passion’
Robert, 24, is originally from Haiti and studied nursing in the Dominican Republic because he had no educational opportunities in Haiti. He came to the U.S. through the CHNV program.
He said he “fled gang violence” in a country that is dealing with massive economic and humanitarian upheaval, and staying in the DR was not an option.
His certified nursing assistant job at Edgewood was a position he dreamed of; when he first arrived in the U.S., he could only get a job in manufacturing. Robert heard about a certified nursing assistant program through International Institute of New England, and took the necessary course while also studying English.
“It is my passion, it’s still my passion,” he said. “I like to make a positive impact in people’s lives — that’s why I love nursing.” He was thrilled to get a job he was qualified for right after getting certified in February 2024, and worked full-time to pay rent and support his grandmother, who he lives with.
“Right now... I can’t even take care of myself because I don’t have a job,” he said through tears. “It’s hard for me to pay my bills. It’s hard for me to pay for our place to live,” he said, adding that he’s burning through savings quickly, and isn’t sure what to do next. He says he’s hoping the Trump administration will reverse its policy change so he and colleagues who also lost their jobs could return.
McKewan, 30, is also originally from Haiti. GBH News agreed to only use his first name over fears he could be detained by federal immigration authorities. McKewan studied medicine in the Dominican Republic and worked as a physician assistant in an emergency room there before coming to the U.S. through the CHNV parole program, with an aunt giving him sponsorship.
He became a certified nursing assistant in September 2023, and split his time working at Whittier Rehabilitation Hospital in Bradford, Mass. and at Amazon.
“It’s like entry-level,” he said. “It’s like my main goal here, to become a doctor, maybe a specialty.” He also described how working with other health care professionals improved his medical knowledge and his English.
But McKewan lost the nursing assistant job in June due to his work permit being revoked, and the separate job at Amazon soon after. McKewan said he’s upset about the lost opportunity. He’s hoping that eventually, courts will decide to reverse the Trump administration’s decision.
McKewan said he fears deportation constantly, particularly because of gang violence and lack of opportunity in his field in Haiti. But he wants to be as productive as possible, even with the constant anxiety of being detained. He’s taking coursework in biology and physiology at Middlesex Community College.
“I’m trying to take some classes to prepare myself for when opportunity will be present to me,” he said.
