By Claudia Villalona
In 1998, Modesta Rodriguez trudged through Central America’s dense jungles and the frigid deserts and mountains of Mexico to escape domestic violence and poverty in her home country of Honduras. At nearly 50 years old, she walked over twenty miles each night, camouflaged in the darkness while struggling to ignore the lifeless bodies that littered the route.
“I was thirsty, tired, hungry and cold, but I couldn’t stop. They [the coyotes or migrant smugglers] don’t wait for anyone,” Modesta said in Spanish. “I would have been nothing but food for the vultures.”
Among the group of twenty other migrants, Modesta found a friend in a young Peruvian man who referred to her as “Titi” or Auntie. She gave him some of her food in exchange for protection. The coyotes sexually assaulted the other women in her group as they pleased– a common occurrence on the migrant trail.
Modesta and the others assumed fictitious names and were strictly forbidden from carrying any form of identification– not even a family member’s phone number. Dying on the migrant route meant quietly disappearing into the desolate and unforgiving terrain.
Today, the passage Modesta took decades ago is well-trodden. Yenis, her husband and their infant child are among the 7 million Venezuelans, or a quarter of the population, that have fled the country’s authoritarian rule and socioeconomic collapse in recent years. The mass exodus constitutes the largest displacement ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.
Yenis and her family survived the Darién Gap, a dangerous 60-mile stretch of jungle that connects North and South America where many migrants are robbed, raped and killed. Human bones litter the jungle-stretch and “the stench of death was hard to stand,” Yenis told the New Yorker. While some things have changed the deadly nature of the journey remains the same.
After a grueling 6-week journey, Modesta crossed the southern U.S. border into Texas. She narrowly missed the hurricane that destroyed Honduras shortly after she left. In the wake of the disaster, the U.S. government granted Honduran nationals residing in the U.S. Temporary Protective Status (TPS).
Presidents from both parties have since used the program to protect migrants fleeing natural catastrophes, war, and societal violence. While the designation provides legal work permits and protection from deportation, it does not offer a direct path to permanent legal residence or citizenship. Nonetheless, she considered herself fortunate.
Nearly 25 years later, Modesta remains in the U.S. in a semi-permanent legal limbo, neither undocumented nor a legal permanent resident, renewing her TPS status every 6 to 18 months. Currently, 600,000 foreign nationals from 16 countries live and work in the U.S. under TPS, with 93% of these recipients originating from Latin America. On average, TPS recipients have lived in the US for over twenty years, according to the Congressional Research Service.
In September, the Biden Administration granted TPS eligibility to just under half a million Venezuelan migrants who have been living in the U.S. prior to July 31, in an effort to ease the pressure on the backlogged federal immigration system and strained local governments amid the nation’s current migrant crisis. Yenis and her family are now eligible for TPS having arrived in late 2022. They are among the 200,000 migrants bussed into New York City from the southern border since 2021.
However, for most newly arrived migrants, the only way to legally stay in the U.S. is to contest their deportation in court and request asylum which offers an eventual path to citizenship. The process is complicated, requires substantial legal assistance and final rulings can take several years or even up to a decade.
Since the last comprehensive immigration reform nearly forty years ago, the government has adopted a patchwork of quick-fix, stop-gap policies that experts say fail to address the deep-rooted, systemic issue. The outdated, understaffed and underfunded immigration and asylum system has failed to respond to historic levels of arrivals at the border.
The precarious reality of the migrant does not end once they cross the border into the U.S.– it is only the beginning. Like so many before and after her, Modesta left the country she called home and risked her life in search of a better future for herself and her family. Nonetheless, she and thousands of others, find themselves locked in a position of uncertainty as casualties of a broken immigration and asylum system.
Modesta’s story offers lessons on the cost of inaction on immigration reform and the need to establish accessible and sustainable paths to legal permanent residency and citizenship. Whether they arrived recently, like Yenis, or decades ago, like Modesta, migrants and asylum seekers express an overwhelming desire to work to provide a stable future for themselves and their families as valued and contributing members of society.
The Migrant Crisis Arrives in NYC
This year, over 2 million undocumented crossings have been tallied at the U.S.-Mexico border for a third-record-setting year in a row. Hundreds of thousands have relocated to New York City, Chicago, Boston and other cities across the country with the help of Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
The surge in arrivals in NYC has challenged its long-standing tradition as a sanctuary for immigrants. In September, Mayor Eric Adams warned that the migrant crisis “will destroy New York City.”
The city government has scrambled to set up emergency housing for migrants in midtown hotels, emergency tent shelters on Randall’s Island, school gymnasiums, office buildings, and parking lots. According to the latest data in October, over 60,000 migrants are staying in the city’s emergency shelters.
Many of the arrivals in the city intend to claim asylum, which would allow them to legally stay and work while they await their cases to be heard. Once the initial asylum application is filed, migrants must wait six months, and often even longer, to receive legal work authorizations.
The federal asylum system, facing a backlog of two million cases, has struggled to process the most recent influx of asylum requests and grant timely work authorizations.
“It’s like watching paint dry,” complained Councilman Bob Holden from Queens to the NYPost on the pace of the process. “It shows that the government — no matter what level, city, state and federal — isn’t cut out to handle this.”
Frustrated state and local officials have campaigned for the Biden administration to expedite work authorizations and allocate more resources to address the influx. The logic is that the faster newly-arrived migrants can work the quicker they can graduate from the city’s overcrowded and strained shelters.
Businesses across the country facing labor shortages also want migrants to have access to legal work. According to labor statistics released this year, more than two million unfilled positions were reported in construction, hospitality, and retail.
In the meantime, many new arrivals in NYC and elsewhere have resorted to working in the informal and underground economy alongside the existing population of undocumented workers, where they are particularly susceptible to exploitation like wage theft.
The Cost of Bureaucratic Delays and Shelter Limits
As the federal government fails to process and issue work permits in a timely manner, Mayor Eric Adams has sought to limit the city’s legal obligations amid the crisis, particularly its “right to shelter” mandate. Earlier this fall, Adams announced a 30-day limit for individuals and a 60-day limit for families in the city-run shelters.
Many legal advocates have raised concerns that evicting thousands, apart from deepening the humanitarian crisis, could further complicate the allocation of work authorizations— a critical step, experts say, to alleviating the acute housing crisis.
Nonetheless, Mayor Adams has remained steadfast, warning that New Yorkers will soon see “people sleeping in the streets” this winter as the city’s shelter system has run “out of room.”
“Forcing families with children who have already endured unthinkable suffering on their journey to New York to be denied safe shelter is devoid of any humanity and is a stain on our city,” Legal Aid and the Coalition for the Homeless said in a joint statement.
Luis, a Honduran migrant who declined to give his last name, arrived in the city with his family over the summer. Unlike Modesta, Luis is not eligible for TPS despite Honduras’ designation, as it is only granted to those who arrived prior to 1999.
While he waits for his work authorization, he and his wife have resorted to selling candy and water bottles on the streets in Jackson Heights.
“We pray that the work permit will arrive before they force us to move out of the shelter,” Luis said in Spanish.
Venezuelans Celebrate TPS
Venezuelans, like Yenis and her family, account for roughly 40% of NYC’s migrant surge and a quarter of occupants in the city’s shelters, according to the city’s estimates.
The Biden Administration’s extension of Temporary Protected Status for recently-arrived Venezuelans living in the U.S. allowed Venezuelans to begin the work authorization process immediately.
“We’ve been living in fear, and it takes it away,” said Julio Cesar Gonzales to the NYTimes. “The fear of not having work, of not eating, of our kids not going to school.”
Venezuelan Honorario González learned of his potential TPS eligibility through a reporter from THE CITY. “The ability to work “would change everything,” he said. “I could pay rent and pay taxes and be legal. All of us want that: to work,” he said.
At 73 years old, Modesta, who diligently pays taxes and renews her TPS every 6 to 18 months, echoed this sentiment, “I am grateful to this country because work dignifies.”
The Reality of Precarity
However, as experts cautiously celebrate the extension, they maintain that the protections offered by the federal program are not a panacea. Delays in the processing of new TPS applications have already been reported, and the application itself requires legal support. Many pro-bono legal aid organizations are stretched thin and lack the capacity to conduct the necessary outreach.
While temporary legality provides relief for many, in the long term, it lends to uncertainty and exclusion, by generating “de facto members of American society who are offered less than full membership,” according to Claire Bergeron, a legal expert in migration.
Under current immigration law, TPS holders are barred from applying for lawful permanent residence if they initially entered the country illegally. This disqualifies the vast majority of current and prospective recipients.
TPS-holders are also vulnerable to sudden termination of their country’s designation, as the Trump administration had attempted and vowed to see through if elected in 2024. This would render hundreds of thousands, many having lived in the country for decades, unable to work and vulnerable to deportation. As Congress delays a more permanent solution, many live in constant fear the next president will discontinue the program.
About 1.8 million people hold Temporary Protected Status, student visas, DACA, or other legal statuses that can be withdrawn at any time with minimal warning.
In a survey conducted earlier this year by the Los Angeles Times and KFF, about 4 in 10 migrants polled with legal, non-permanent status said they avoided talking to police, going to the doctor, or traveling out of fear of losing their status.
The paths to legal permanent residence, and eventually citizenship, are incredibly narrow for those who need it the most. In a June report titled, “Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible,” the Cato Institute found that less than 1% of applicants for permanent residence are eligible.
Modesta shows resilience in the face of continued uncertainty. “Who builds the skyscrapers? Who cooks the food in the restaurants? Who cleans the houses and offices? Who picks the fruit? Who tends the garden?” It was clear she had the conversation many times before.
“I’m not complaining about the work; I complain that they talk badly of us. We do what we can to survive. We don’t risk our lives or leave our home because we want to,” Modesta continued defiantly, as tears swelled in her eyes. “It’s not that I don’t love my country. Honduras is beautiful!”