>>This week on NewsNight Florida's Venezuelan community's divisions over immigration with thousands set to lose temporary protected statu in just a few weeks.

Plus, possible new restrictions on trave from dozens of countries, including Venezuela, Hait and Cuba.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort welcome to NewsNight where we take an in-depth look at the top storie and issues in Central Florida and how they shap our community.

It's been another wee dominated by immigration news, led mostly by the Trump administration's decision to deport hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members.

The removal of alleged members of Tren de Aragua and the 18th century Alien Enemies Act has triggered a battle over the ability of the court to block the president's agenda.

Meanwhile, Florida GOP lawmakers are navigating political divisions in the state over the Trump administration's targeting of Temporar Protected Status for Venezuelans and communities across the state, braced for a potential announcement of travel bans or restrictions on nationals from Venezuela and dozens of other countries, including Cuba and Haiti.

On Monday I talked with Eduardo Gamarra, professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University.

And we started with how the first wave of TPS expirations next month is being viewed b Florida's Venezuelan community.

>>The opinions var and they vary widely, right?

Clearly those who are on TPS, and are facing April 7th.

That first group, right, they're the most concerned abou what's likely to happen to them.

And so they are obviously stunned because many of them in the surveys that we that we've done her at the university, many of them were very clearly identified with Donald Trump.

And they understand that come April 7th, this first group, at least, becomes deportable.

And so that really is a, a sense of great concern.

Now there's another group, of course, and this is where it becomes, you know, predictable in a way.

But the leadership here, and especially those who are American citizens, right.

Those who have solved their immigration problem.

The, and, what we're seeing is, continued support for the administration.

>>I wonder if members of the community distinguish between the merits of removing those fleeing Venezuela with TPS statu or asylum claims, for example, and moves like we saw over the weekend to remove alleged Venezuelan gang members on an expedited basis without the usual immigration hearing process.

Is there support for that?

>>The discussions, for example, this morning on on Venezuelan radio, on Spanish radio in Miami were divided along those two lines.

There are those who say, look these are alleged gang members.

We don't know their names.

We don't know who they are.

Somebody was calling and saying, look, they somebody sa a relative of theirs, you know, and, that person does not belong to Tren de Aragua.

So, so you have all of thi kind of stuff of people saying, you know, doubting whether the those deported are really Tren de Aragua or whether it's just a, you know, a way to to kind of expeditiously send out, Venezuelans.

And the there's the other group, right, who basically who basically says, you know, thank God.

Right.

Thank God they're getting rid of these bad people.

Right?

This is what we voted for.

>>Well, talking of those political dynamics.

I wonder how lawmaker from South Florida, particularly members of Congress, are responding here.

They have long been, on the side of Venezuelans who want to migrate and fle the Maduro regime in Venezuela.

How are they treading that tightrope now when talking about, the Trump administration's more aggressive approach to immigration?

>>Well, look, I think some of them are very worried about, about reelection.

The districts they represent are very diverse districts.

For example, Diaz-Balart represents Doral, and Doral is a is a place that is fundamentally, you know, Venezuelan.

It's called Doral-zuela for all practical purposes.

And and then Maria Elvira represents district 27, which is a much more diverse district.

And Maria Elvira Salazar in particular was sort of a champion.

She even promoted, bipartisan, alternative to, to, you know, she wanted kind of immigration reform along those lines.

And they have made they have been very public about defending the administration.

Right.

But also they have bee very cautious locally by saying, you know, in even writing letters to the administration saying, you know, look, these these people here are nice people.

We've defended them.

We ought to do whatever we can to, to, maybe exclude them from, from, from this.

But, I don't think tha there's any, any, tangible way in which they can, decouple their support for Trump and, and his immigration policy.

Right.

And, and they're, they're, they're attempt to remain in the good graces of this community.

>>Eduardo Gamarra from FIU, a reminder we are recording this program on Thursday morning so things can change by air time.

In fact, Governor DeSantis and US boarder Czar Tom Homan is scheduled to hold a roundtable in Sarasota.

So we'll keep an eye on that.

In the meantime, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

And joining us in the studio this week, Kirsten Delgado, you're the morning anchor at WFTV Channel 9.

It's been a while since we have you on.

>>It has, but I'm happy to be here.

>>Good to see you here today, Kirsten.

Joe Mario Pedersen, Central Florida Public Media.

Good to see Joe Mario.

>>Good to see you.

>>Thanks for coming on.

And coming back to the room, Stephanie Rodriguez from WKMG News 6.

Good to see you Stephanie.

>>Always a pleasure.

>>Thanks for being here today, guys.

Stephanie, let me let's start with TPS, shall we?

We talked last time abou the revocation of TPS extension for many Venezuelans since then, Haitians have been added to that list having that TPS extension roll back.

You've covered the legal action over this whole process.

The Trump administration's authority to vacate Biden era TPS extensions.

I guess with Venezuelans and Haitians facing multiple lawsuits.

What are the arguments there?

>>Yeah.

So they say that President Trum didn't have the authority under state statut that governs TPS to what they sa is pull the rug out from under peopl who already have it.

And then, of course, the extension that President Biden had when he was in office before he left in January.

So the root of their argument is that this didn't meet the criteria needed to meet the state statute to remove TPS extension.

They also say that it's discrimination based on racial bias, and that has bad political influence is what they're arguing.

They're saying that it's violating the Fifth Amendment because it's discrimination based on race, ethnicity or national origin.

So they're really saying it's just discrimination and that the criteria wasn't met for this move to be made.

>>We've talked on the show about the Venezuelan community's reaction Joe Mario.

But Central Florida Public Media has been looking at Florida's Haitian communities and how they're viewing these decisions.

What's your, newsroom hearing on that?

>>Yeah, I believe you're referring to my colleagues, Joe Burns and Rick Brunson.

And we found tha Florida is a very large home, for the Haitian community.

You know, about over 200,000.

>>In Central and South Florida.

>>Yeah, absolutely.

And in Central Florida being the second greatest community, biggest community for Haitians protected under that status.

Right.

I believe it's, over 40,000 call Central Florida home, with a lot of them living in Pine Hills, right?

But what we're hearing is a lot of fear, right?

With, a lot of uncertainty.

And we've been talking to, lawyer and talking to church leaders, who've been trying to talk to the community and just remind them, you know, what are their rights?

What do they do in these situations?

But they're starting to find that, at least in the example of church leaders, that members of the church are not coming to church, because they're under lockdown right now.

They are afraid to leave their home, and they simply just don't se the risk of leaving right now.

>>I mean, things have changed for that community.

I remember covering the Haitian community some years ago.

And many of them at that point were pushing for permanent residenc for that status to be changed.

And things have certainly changed since then.

WFTV has reported on the response as well, from immigrant advocates.

How do they support that position that TPS should not be rolled back, tha it should, in fact be extended?

What is their argument there?

>>Their position begins with what temporary protected status is, right?

The protection of citizens who come to the United States because of what's happening in their countr is untenable, right?

They have political uncertaint and stability, and it's not safe to be ther specifically for Haiti, right?

A year ago in March, they had gangs overthrow the government that the the capital there of Port au Prince.

And since then, advocates say things haven't gotten better.

They've gotten worse since then.

They say gangs have, collecte more streets and more resources leading to a multitude of problems, including a hunger crisis and an issue with infrastructure, right.

Like if you think about the storied history of Haiti, with infrastructure, it's been troublesome with recovery from, multiple earthquakes.

Right.

And so what happens?

You couple that with all this violence and this overthrowing of of the government there, they have been able to come back from that.

So what they're saying is, listen, our Haitian community here, those who do want to go back are happy to, but they don't hav the infrastructure to go back.

There's nothing really to go back to.

You're talking about a country that is not prepared to accept all these people who left because of the political turmoil happening there that persists and has only gotten worse.

So there's just nothing to go back to.

The country is not in a position to accept these people back.

>>Yeah.

And I went to Hait the year after the earthquake.

And it was it was a mess.

And by all accounts, it hasn't really improved at all.

The politics of TPS, right, as we heard Eduardo Gamarra referred to there in Florida, is pretty polarizing, particularly for Republicans who've supported relief for Venezuelans over the years.

What have we seen, from GOP leaders in Florida since we last discussed the TPS issue?

>>Yeah as we heard him say, you know, large, large Venezuelan community here in Florida, especially in South Florida.

So we have Republicans that serve those communities having to deal with the move by the Trump administration and then also having to go back home to their constituents and talk to them and say, this is what I'm doing.

And they're right now.

What they're saying is that they're trying to convince President Trump to change his mind.

That's what they're trying to do.

And they hope that they have an ally in Secretary of State Marco Rubio, obviously Cuban descent.

And he has been openly critica of Nicolas Maduro in the past.

Just recently, as last month this week, bunch of congressmen from congressmen and congresswomen from 11 states, including Florida, actually sent him a letter saying that they were unhappy sharing their disdain for this decision.

So they hop that they have an ally in him.

But so far, there's been no concrete plans laid out as to how they want to get to this position, where they're helping Venezuelan people to continue under Temporary Protected Status.

They just say they're trying to get the president to change his mind.

>>Yeah.

And when Rubio was a senator, of course, he was very supportive of that community.

So it'll be really interesting to see where he comes down on all this.

I just wanted to wrap up this segment by talkin about a New York Times report, that the Trump administration is considering sort of, I guess, wider travel bans.

We were familia with the so-called Muslim ban, during the first Trump administration bans and restrictions on travel from dozens of countries that have large populations in Florida.

What do we know about that reporting, Stephanie?

>>Yeah, absolutely.

It's been reported that the Trump administration issued a memo that had a list of 41 countries on it, and they divided these countries into three groups.

So the first group had ten countries, including Cuba and Venezuela, which, of course, we have a huge population of here in Florida.

And all of those countries in that first ten group, that first group would have a full visa suspension.

If there were to happen that second group, it's the smaller one.

Five countries in there.

Haiti is included in there-- >>Haiti is part of that.

>>Again, we're talking about a lot of Haitian people, specifically here in Central Florida.

That group would have partial suspensions that could impact tourist visas, immigration visas, things like that.

And then that final group is the biggest group has 26 countries in it.

And it's kind of vague from what we've seen in reporting from the memo, that they would get partial suspension if their government didn't make efforts to address, quote unquote, deficiencies within 60 days.

And as you mentioned, we've seen bans like this before the president in his first term, the so-called Muslim ban.

So, again, this is through reporting that we've learned that this memo was put out there, but we haven't seen it happen yet.

And but it could come down the line soon.

>>And those visa restrictions, of course, will be based on a person's nationality.

They could be living anywhere.

It depends what passport they carry.

Fascinating conversation for sure.

A reminde you can find much more NewsNight content on our website, including my full lengt interview with Eduardo Gamarra from Florida International University.

It's all at wucf.org/newsnight.

Okay, next tonight, the latest on Florida's immigration law passe in a special session last month.

Since then, local law enforcement agencies have been entering into agreements with federal authorities as the state keeps a watchful eye on compliance with effort to deport undocumented migrants.

>>Our legislature and our cabinet and Governor DeSantis came together to create this legislation to create these tools to let Florid and the other states, if they have the wil in other local communities, you if you have the will to resolve and the attention to find them, sort them, detain them and deport them.

Total relentless.

No B.S.

straight on it.

You hear President Trump say it every day.

Mass deportation.

So we want Florida.

We like to compete with Texas, Oklahoma, the other states.

We are ready to be the number one state, the bellwether, the leader of the Florida blueprint on how you do it.

>>Larry Keefe there.

Okay, Stephanie, let me start with you on this one.

News 6 has covered the the implementation of local and state cooperation with federal authorities.

How is it looking at this stage?

>>So my colleague Mike Valenti recently covered a town hall over in Osceola County, as we know, a large Hispanic Latino population there.

And the sherif was there, Marcos Lopez.

And he was talking about what he has to d and in his role as the sheriff.

And he basically said his hands are tied and he has to follow the law.

>>Follow the law, yeah.

>>But he did say that his team, the sheriff's office, won't go actively looking for people who are undocumented.

But if they encounter someone they believe might be undocumented or who is, they're going to contact ICE.

We are seeing across the state operations that are happening right now where they are trying to find undocumented people.

But of course, as with any law enforcemen agency, they need probable cause to maybe someone speeding, you pull them over and then when you're questioning them, that's when you are able to understand their citizenship status.

But it is happening across the state.

>>Joe Mario, the state' introduced a mechanism, right, designed to sort of help monitor what these local agencies are doing in term of a compliance, with Florida's Florida's, laws on supporting, federal enforcement.

What do we know about that effort and whether there has been any pushback to it?

>>Yeah.

So the mechanism you're referring to is LEAD, which is law enforcement accountability dashboard.

That was something that, Larry Keefe, who we just saw, had introduce earlier this week.

And really, it's a channel, that allows, officers, to report on other officers or those in leadership, that they are not following through on the agreement with the federal government, in police working together with like, ICE agents, right.

On their, undocumented immigrant, policies and strategies.

So the pushback that we're seeing on that really comes down to, attorneys, city attorneys that are stating that there's really nothing that requires a police department to agree to do this, that it goe beyond that which is required.

And actually, we saw something play out earlier this week, with, the city of Fort Myers and its city council, whic voted to not sign the agreement, with, federal authoritie and Florida's attorney general, shot back a letter, letting them know that they were in direct violation, and that if they don't sign the agreement, they could face severe criminal punishments.

>>Something else that could end up in the courts.

Before we continue, I want to hear from Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey on Florida's new immigration legislation.

Take a listen.

>>It gives us the abilit to not only add to work with our federal partner to enforce the immigration laws, but also to enforc our new state laws that are so important to us that were such a big part of the special session, giving us those tools to if somebody is in our countr illegally, they're going back.

>>Sheriff Wayne Ivey.

Kirsten, WFTV has been covering, law enforcement agencies in Central Florida.

They're working with the federal government, on arresting immigrants, but also, those that are in violation of the state level Florida immigration laws.

Being in Florida, I guess without documents, what's your newsroom seeing?

>>So last week, Brevar County deputies actually conduct what they call Operation Shield working, like, as you mentioned, alongsid state and federal agencies.

And you just heard from the sheriff there.

And he was very clear in saying, you know, the governor wants us to implement this, and we're going to go forward with it.

He said that within an hour of starting this operation they arrested seven people who were in illegally in Brevard County and then were taken into ICE detention.

The sheriff's-- >>That's very quick.

>>Yeah, seven in just an hour.

And they said the sheriff' office will also be taking part in a federal program called 287G, what does that mean?

Well that's a program that implements separate enforcement models, one of them being a task force model allowing law enforcement to act as an extension of Homeland Security and ICE.

35 members from the Brevard County Sheriff's Office will be taking that training.

So it's something that Brevard County Sheriff specifically is taking very seriously and taking head on.

>>I just wanted to wrap up this, segment, with some data coming out of Florida's 2023 immigration law.

Joe Mario, specifically on hospitals being required to ask patients for their immigration status.

What is the state reporting on the costs it says that this care for undocumented people is is is.

>>Yeah, so that report came out of the dashboard that, you know, as you mentioned, they're legally required to put out there.

And that number was about $660 million on in total cost of care.

But the longer you look at that number, the more loosey goosey it really gets.

And it's really the same problem that we had with the number last year, which is how that number was determined.

And it doesn't account for recouped funds.

And when I say when I say that, I mean insurance, right.

So the amount of money that undocumented immigrants, when they're in the emergency department, the amount of money that they actually pay as far as that cost of care is concerned.

So at $660 million that was accounted for by taking the amount of undocumented immigrants who pass through the emergency department and multiplying it by the total cost of care, the state had, which was $77 billion.

But again, that $77 billion doesn't account for insurance and the amount of money that was recouped, in funds from that right.

And as far as like the amount of undocumented immigrants who passed through emergency departments, it was less than 1%.

It was 0.76%.

So that's $660 million.

We don't know what the true number of that really is because it doesn't account for, the recouped funds and nor does it account for what the actual number of undocumented immigrants really was because they-- >>Are they required to-- >>And that's the thing.

Yeah.

You are not required to answer that question if you were asked and the hospital.

>>And of course, medical billing is fiendishly complicated, so who knows where those numbers actually stand.

But that is all the time we have for for this part of the program.

My thanks to Kirsten Delgado WFTV Channel 9, Stephanie Rodriguez from WKMG News 6.

Thanks so much for coming in, guys.

Appreciate it.

Joe Mario, stick around.

We're going to talk to you a little bit about your health reporting in just a moment.

In the meantime, just to let you know we'll be talking about an important part of our econom next week, tourism from Canada and the impact of curren US policy on travel to Florida from north of the border.

Be sure to tune in next week for that.

Meanwhile, a reminder you can find us on social media we're at WUCF TV on Facebook and Instagram.

You'll also find us @NewsNightWUCF on X.

Okay, finally tonigh we wanted to tell you about Joe Mario's recent reporting series for Central Florida Public Medi entitled Medically Unnecessary.

The report examined the proces of Medicaid redetermination following the pandemic which resulted in many Florida children losing access to the Medicaid program Children's Medical Services, or CMS.

Instead, some have shifted into Florid Healthy Kids, a state program, which can be more expensive and lack the coverage offered by CMS.

Both, of course, fall unde the Florida Kid Care umbrella.

So some great reporting here by Joe Mario.

And let's start with that 23-24 Medicaid disenrollment period following the pandemic.

Talk us through how the process of Medicaid redetermination came about.

>>Sure, sure.

So to really understand that you gotta reel back to the pandemic.

And during that time, th federal government, in enacted something called the continuou enrollment provision.

And during that time, states could not terminate Medicaid coverage, for anyone, coming onto Medicaid, the logic here being, that nobody, during a pandemi should be caught without health insurance, right?

But we get to the end of the pandemic, we get to the end of the public health emergency, and states were allowe to begin terminating coverage.

They were allowed to, re determine the eligibility of Medicaid.

Right.

And Florida, started moving very fast on that.

They terminated in about a year's time, 1.4 million people's coverage.

And during that time, over 500,000, of that number were children.

And from what we can tell, you know, at least a small portion of that number, about 50,000, possibly.

Moved over to that Florida Healthy Kids insurance program that you mentioned earlier.

>>What are the challenges faced by children, particularly with complex medical needs?

And you you reported the bit on this in your series that have been moved from Medicaid to sort of state run health insurance plans, like healthy kids, if there are kid that have sort of very specific, complicated cases, does it affect them more?

>>Yeah, this was reall I believe this was at the heart of of our work here.

Was covering this population, these families who have, these kinds of kids and, you know, to put a definition on that, you know, we're talking abou kids who are, chronically ill, we're talking about disabled kids, and, you know, kids you know, coming off of, like, surviving cancer, right who have a long road of recovery in front of them.

And this is not going to be you know, a few weeks or a few months, a few therapy sessions.

This is going to be years, if not a lifetime, worth of worth of care.

And, you know, the families that we were talking to, you know, when they moved over to Florida Healthy Kids, because their, their income was too much, for Medicaid, or CMS like you pointed out earlier, children's medical services, but not enough for private insurance.

They fall into this gap where Florida Healthy Kids is not covering, you know, these weekly medicines.

You know, one family, was telling us they don't.

She has a daughter who's immunocompromised.

She requires, an infusion of antibodies every week.

That's a really expensive infusion.

It's $15,000 per shot.

That's not something she can afford on her own, right?

And she can't get that medicine for her kid because it's not deemed medically necessary.

It's not rehabilitative.

And a lot of different families are having a very similar issues to that.

>>Have we seen any movement from lawmakers on making kid care plans that families need more affordable?

What's the where's the legislature on this?

>>So the legislature is actuall really united on this in 2023.

They they passed an expansion, unanimously.

>>Yeah.

>>That-- >>That doesn't happen very often.

>>Does not happen very often.

But it seems like the thing that we can all agree on is that children should be covered, within the health care system.

Right.

And what this what this did was it created a bigger threshold, for eligibility, for those who could qualify for, Florida's subsidized, health care insurance and the populatio that we were just talking about, you know, families with these complex medical, challenged children, this would really impact them because it would increase their access to Medicai or children's medical services.

And that's great.

The issue is it hasn't happened yet.

We're still waiting for that expansion happening was supposed to happen last year.

>>Do we know why?

>>We do.

Florida has stated that due to an ongoing legal fight, that it has with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the other CMS, during the Biden administration, there was a rule, laid out that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, have been telling states who charge monthly premiums on their health insurance that if a family misses a monthly premium, then the state must continue to cover that family for 12 months.

Florida says that it cannot d that, that Florida Healthy Kids, the way that it works, is, it depends on those monthly premiums.

In order for the insurance to continue working.

Right.

And it would cost $1 million a month in order to keep that, that CMS rule, in order.

>>It's a fascinating story.

And, I'm glad you're over it, and I'm sure you'll keep on with it.

And you can find a link to Joe Mario's reporting serie Medically Unnecessary on our websit wucf.org/newsnight.

But that is all the time we hav for this week.

My thanks to Joe Mario Pedersen from Central Florid Public Media.

Thanks so much for coming in and sharing your reporting with us here today.

In the meantime, we'll see you next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

And all of us here at News Night.

Take care and have a great week.