As a little girl in Nicaragua, Daysi Rocha Cruz loved to stare up at the sky, watching airplanes soar overhead.
“I’d say to myself, ‘Wow, I’m never going to be there,’ ” she recalled in Spanish from the front steps of her East Boston home on a recent morning. “But since coming here, I was able to get my foot in at the airport.”
The 27-year-old came to the U.S. in 2022 seeking asylum. She started as a cabin cleaner working at Boston’s Logan International Airport last year. On a normal day, she’d take the bus to work, get her assignment and prep planes for takeoff all evening. She always wanted to become a flight attendant, she said, and this job felt like a step in the right direction.
“This country gave me that opportunity after I’d gotten my work permit,” she said. “Maybe for a lot of people it isn’t that important. But for me, it was a really big accomplishment.”
Then in April, one of her supervisors called with jarring news: They told her she couldn’t work for the airport service company anymore. A letter from U.S. Customs and Border Protection arrived a few days later, saying her “customs seal” — a type of clearance for the security areas where she worked — had been revoked, “effective immediately.”
Rocha Cruz felt terrible, she recalled. “I spent the whole day crying, because I mean, you have your job and you have to pay rent and also I was studying English and I was paying for the classes,” she said. “It was a real blow. Not to mention, I liked my job.”
She’s not alone. About 80 others working at Logan got letters like hers, according to Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 1,700 workers at Logan. Airport service workers have been quietly let go across the country as the Trump administration remakes immigration policy that’s narrowing pathways into the workforce.
The vast majority of Logan’s service workers are immigrants, the union said. They hail from Haiti, Venezuela, Ethiopia and Cape Verde, among other countries. They clean terminals and prepare airplanes for takeoff. They make sure luggage gets where it needs to go and help people in wheelchairs get to their flights on time.
The union said hundreds of people nationwide have been told their clearance is now revoked.
“What’s going on at the airport as a whole is extremely chaotic. And not just Boston, but across the United States,” said Kevin Brown, an executive vice president with the union.
Federal authorities are targeting immigrant workers in multiple ways, according to the union.
The Trump administration ended what’s called CHNV, a humanitarian parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, earlier this year. Dozens of Logan service workers had gotten work permits through the program and now face an uncertain future.
Brown said the union has been working to reinstate workers — successfully in many cases. But across the country, at least 600 immigrants have lost their jobs, according to the union, as a result of recent changes in immigration policy.
MassPort, which operates Logan, declined to comment on the impact of the job losses. Officials from Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment.
The letter CBP sent to Rocha Cruz, which she shared with WBUR, claimed she’d “entered the U.S. at a time and place other than as designated by the Attorney General.” The letter said she lacked lawful status to remain in the U.S. — which she says is not true.
Yet the letter said she had been placed into removal proceedings.
Rocha Cruz said she applied for political asylum in the U.S. three years ago. She’s had a work permit for about a year-and-a-half. Her immigration attorney has assured her she still has both legal status and her work permit. The next hearing in her asylum proceedings is set for 2028.
But the news from the Trump administration has come with a sting: Suddenly, the government considers giving workers like Rocha Cruz access to secure areas at the airport an “unacceptable risk to public health, interest or safety, national security, aviation safety, the revenue, or the security of the area.”
“You spend time giving it your all, doing things right, to help people, to make sure their flight goes well,” Rocha Cruz said. “It’s unjust.”
The tightening rules for working immigrants are likely to impact airport services at Logan and nationwide. The union said every lost worker strains the system more.
Mark Williams, a professor of finance at Boston University, said Logan is a microcosm of what’s happening in industries across the country.
“Unless those jobs get replaced — that is, with domestic workers — then the services will be reduced,” Williams said. “And we’re seeing it already. We’re seeing businesses that are closing down because they’ve relied heavily on immigrant labor, and that’s being restricted.”
Williams said the local economy will likely see ripple effects if the labor supply is not met. In Massachusetts, where immigrants make up a larger share of the workforce than in the total population, he said, there will be an “economic hit.”
Brown, the union leader, said it’s been difficult to fill vacancies in places where employees need a customs seal.
“ Especially in Terminal E, because basically you need people who are U.S. citizens to do these jobs. And not a lot of U.S. citizens seem to be running to do these jobs.”
He also worries about more people losing their jobs. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants face potential loss of work authorization as the Trump administration looks to end Temporary Protected Status for people from multiple countries.
“That would create a whole other group of people who would lose their eligibility to continue work,” Brown said.
Brown hopes state leaders will take action. He said problems stemming from the loss of immigrant workers at Logan are compounded by a lack of dependable wage increases, affordable health care, and a training fund for all service workers.
“That is something that MassPort and the governor can do to improve the situation,” he said.
But that won’t help Rocha Cruz. She was unemployed for three months after she lost her job at Logan. She recently found work as a cleaner at a local museum.
She’s working on her English and prays her asylum hearing works out. And she still hopes to work at an airport again.
“And then, achieve my dream,” she said. “I know it’s not easy, but step by step.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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