Trump Voter Regrets His Choice as His Restaurant Workers Face Deportation After Believing Trump 'Was a Businessman'

Miami restaurateur Wilkinson 'Ken' Sejour said in August that he regretted voting for Donald Trump after the end of Haitian Temporary Protected Status disrupted staffing at his Chef Creole restaurants. He told CBS Evening News that he had expected the president's business background to benefit entrepreneurs.

Sejour said he had lost management staff across seven locations and warned that he might have to close two restaurants. Those were his account and expectations at the time; the available reporting does not establish whether the proposed closures subsequently occurred.

Chef Creole Owner Described Staffing Losses

Sejour founded Chef Creole in 1992 and developed it into a South Florida restaurant business known for Haitian and Bahamian-inspired food. In late July 2026, he said four employees had already left.

He attributed the departures to the loss of immigration protections and fear of enforcement. Employees were unwilling to continue working because they worried about being detained, he told Local 10, while the labour shortage was increasing costs.

The business also faced disruption from rumours of an immigration raid. A detention near one of its Little Haiti restaurants prompted claims that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had raided the premises, but the incident was not a raid on the business.

Sejour said the rumours nevertheless frightened customers. His account described the effects of both staffing losses and anxiety about enforcement, rather than establishing that every departing worker had been detained or deported.

What the End of Haitian TPS Meant

TPS is a federal programme that can allow eligible nationals of designated countries to remain in the United States and obtain work authorisation when conditions make returning unsafe.

On 25 June 2026, the Supreme Court ruled in 'Mullin v. Doe' that the TPS statute generally bars judicial review of the administration's decisions to end the designations for Haiti and Syria. The ruling cleared the way for termination; it did not determine whether any individual beneficiary should be removed from the United States.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services subsequently listed 27 July 2026 as the employment-authorisation end date for the affected Haitian TPS documents.

The change affected hundreds of thousands of Haitians who had relied on the designation for protection from removal and permission to work.

However, losing TPS does not automatically mean that every former beneficiary has been ordered to leave. A person's exposure to removal depends on their individual immigration circumstances, including whether they have another lawful status, protection or pending claim.

The end of a designation is therefore separate from an individual removal order. It also does not establish that every employee who left Sejour's restaurants faced the same legal circumstances.

Sejour Said He Regretted Voting for Trump

Sejour said he supported Trump in the 2024 election because he believed the president's experience in business would help people running companies.

Trump had 'sold to me that he is a businessman', he told the broadcaster. Sejour said he had expected that background to translate into an understanding of how businesses operate and grow.

Asked whether he regretted voting for Trump, he answered: 'Yes.'

He also said he could not support a candidate whose policies were having what he described as a negative ripple effect on his community and the local economy.

His comments reflected a change in his assessment of Trump after the immigration-policy changes affected his workforce. They did not establish the current status of individual employees or confirm that the two restaurants he discussed had closed.

For a business Sejour had built over more than three decades, the staffing losses were substantial enough for him to warn publicly about its future. His August interview linked that concern to his regret over his vote, while the consequences for individual former TPS beneficiaries remained dependent on their own immigration circumstances.