When Venezuelan journalist Eulimar Nunez saw the airport chaos triggered by President Donald Trump's now-suspended executive order on immigration, she decided to try to upgrade her status from permanent resident to US citizen. Like her, many foreigners in Florida - living in the country legally or illegally - are in a state of fear and confusion.
"It is not that I think he is going to go after Venezuelans. But everything is so unstable and all the rules are changing so fast that I am terrified," said Nunez, 34, who has lived in Miami as a legal resident since 2010. She remembers the pandemonium that broke out in many US airports when Trump on January 27 abruptly signed an order barring nationals from seven mainly Muslim countries for 90 days, all refugees for 120 and Syrian refugees indefinitely.
Some of those arriving from the seven Muslim countries, including Iraq, Iran and Syria, were detained and sent back on the next flight. People with valid US visas who happened to be abroad, such as students or researchers, were unable to return to America.
A judge in Seattle suspended the order, and on Thursday night a three-judge panel in San Francisco declined to reinstate it. The case will now likely go to the Supreme Court.
"I am shocked by the lack of communication with which these decisions were made, and the sloppy way in which they were carried out," said Nunez. "So I am very afraid of depending on the discretion of US agents." That fear is cited by many foreigners who, like Nunez, are rushing to upgrade their legal status in the United States: from work visa to permanent resident - the so-called green card holders - or from the latter to US citizen.