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Hundreds of thousands of immigrants with temporary protective status dread what could be coming if lawsuits against the Trump administration fail?

We speak to one Southwest Florida family worried about the federal push for deportations.

Voices heard.

Thousands of Southwest Floridians joined a nationwide movement looking to challenge actions of the current white House, from government downsizing to tariffs.

It's rarely that I get to be at a kind of trade show environment where you have other types of technologies, so it's just exciting to see all the other ways that people are innovating and improving our world.

And some of the brightest minds descended on to Fort Myers.

Their goal sparked the progress of innovation in honor of Thomas Edison.

Hello, I'm Sandra Victorova.

Thank you for joining us.

For hundreds of thousands of immigrants in Florida living here with legal permission.

This is a time of fear and concern.

The Trump administration, in step with its campaign promise of mass deportations, is working to end temporary protective status for qualifying immigrants from countries like Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

For years, these immigrants have been permitted to live and work here because the US government agreed their homelands were too unsafe for them to return until now.

Today, a look at the implications for one Southwest Florida family, hoping the white House will lose its legal battle to deport families like theirs.

Eric Dillard loves college.

He's an Fgcu honor student, balancing three part time jobs.

His positive attitude makes it easy to miss the stress.

This 21 year old carries every day.

Some kids are worried about what they're going to do when their next spring break.

Some kids like us.

We're worried about, well, how are we even going to be here in America for the next spring break?

And we're even going to be in this country for Christmas comes around.

Should I even start worrying about applying for next semester?

Those thoughts are not easy.

Thoughts.

Eric arrived in the U.S. at age 12.

His family is called Collier County Home.

Since leaving Venezuela in 2014.

His father publicly opposed their homelands repressive government of Hugo Chavez, which he says put their family's safety at risk.

It's not safe.

Yes, it is still home to many.

It's not.

It's not safe.

His father, Roel, fears what would happen if the Trump administration wins in court, successfully ending TPS for his family.

See?

Bought an alligator.

Venezuela.

If they deport me returning to Venezuela, I run the risk of imminent imprisonment and not only being jailed, but being at risk of being sent to a place of torture that they have for people who have stood up in opposition to them as a regime.

According to the Associated Press, nearly 8 million people have fled political violence and turmoil in Venezuela, considered one of the biggest displacements worldwide.

The family is trying to secure a secondary legal path to be able to stay.

Recent federal court rulings temporarily blocked the termination of TPS by the Trump administration.

But the jovenes know the legal battle against TPS is not over.

We know it's going to be repealed.

So some people were nervous.

Some people were panicking.

We had a strong faith that this country and that this government would have those checks and balances in place to prevent such a drastic and radical change happening.

Eric and his dad say they're hopeful their family avoids deportation.

They believe the U.S. ultimately will defend the contribution and immigrants bring to this country, including the two local businesses they're building.

Instead of being labeled a liability, that's one of their claims for taking down the TPS program for Venezuelans.

It's that most of the people that came were part of criminal organizations that came here to, only to terrorize and take advantage of this country.

While the doors are open, the vast majority of people are actually fleeing Venezuela, not out of their own will, but out of the necessity of freedom and the necessity of going to a place where they can live with their families and prosper.

To help us better understand the developments on TPS.

Is Indira Demine an immigration attorney here in Southwest Florida?

Indira, welcome.

Thank you for having me.

So help us to understand why the federal government grants certain immigrants protection under TPS.

Sure.

TPS stands for temporary protective status.

It's a designation given to nationals of a particular country.

If there are events in that home country making it difficult for for folks to return to that country for example, there might be a natural disaster, or civil unrest in the home country.

In the case of Haiti.

In 2010, there was a, an earthquake and so Haitian nationals in the United States could not return to Haiti because situations were unsafe.

And so the Department of State will designate certain countries for TPS for a particular period of time.

Usually that's an 18 month designation.

So, as the name implies, temporary protected status.

One would not expect that this would last forever.

So help us understand, you know, obviously folks feel it is unfair that this protection be taken away from, for instance, Venezuelan immigrants or folks from Haiti.

Why now?

Okay.

And so you're right.

It's temporary protected status.

And so, as the name implies, it every 18 months there must be a re designation of TPS in order for folks to continue to get the benefits of TPS.

And the benefits are you cannot be deported during that designation period.

You get a temporary work permit, you get a social, and you're allowed to remain in the United States during that time.

And while it is temporary in nature, some TPS designations have been around for ten, 15, 20 years.

And so, if you have been on TPS for that period of time, you're just you've built lives in the United States.

Haiti is a good example.

Exactly.

They've had TPS designation since 2010.

And so 15 years in that time, folks have built lives.

They have children, they have businesses, homeowners.

And so it's very difficult to say we've canceled it.

And now you have to return to your home country.

Also, in addition to that, as a TPS holder, you would say, well, situations in my home countries has not, improved.

And so to cancel it now is simply unfair because I'm going back to an extremely dangerous situation.

Help us to understand the recent rulings that especially this Venezuelan family that we recently saw.

You know, they felt that there was some sort of relief in the in the recent rulings in federal court, right to their case to be able to stay in the United States.

This is just a temporary victory, correct?

That's right.

And so March 31st.

So just a few days ago, the district court postponed the cancellation of, TPS for Venezuela.

It was set to expire, earlier in April.

And so because it's now postponed, folks that are on TPS from Venezuela can renew their TPS.

Now, we're not sure how long and, how long this postponement is going to be in place, but based on prior litigation surrounding TPS, this can go on for years.

And so, what we saw in the first Trump administration, a similar thing happened with TPS for Haiti.

There was a litigation filed.

It postponed the cancellation, and that litigation went on up until the end of the first Trump administration.

So I wouldn't be surprised if this litigation goes on for a few years.

Indira, to mine, we thank you so much for the update on the situation, and we'll have you back to continue to update us.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you.

Thousands of people took to the streets of southwest Florida as part of a nationwide movement.

Coming up, the different causes uniting protesters and their message of hands off.

An estimated 3 million people took part nationwide in over 1200 hands off demonstrations in southwest Florida.

Folks gathered from Sarasota to Naples to protest a growing list of issues they blame on the current Trump administration.

WGCU's Amanda Inscore Whittamore reports.

You mean Monster Machine?

This is what it looks like.

Their causes varied, their chance vociferous up.

Oh!

Shut up!

On April 5th, over 7000 people assembled up and down the coast of southwest Florida to voice their frustration or anger with the Trump administration on Social Security.

Demonstrators lined the streets, marched bridges and carried signs, all part of the National Hands Off rally.

Karen Edison, with the Lee County Democratic Party, described the intent of the movement essentially hands off the Bill of rights our freedom for press, freedom for speech, freedom for religion, freedom to petition our government, the whole list and they are being infringed.

Hey ho ho ho!

Track that most of the health centers that the U.S. government was helping support overseas.

All that funding cut overnight in one day, and those health centers actually closing down.

We would have never thought that we would be that country.

Those individuals, along with their employers, have been paying in throughout their entire working lives into the Medicare system, into Social Security and the perception that this is some kind of a Ponzi scheme or some terrible thing.

This is ridiculous.

Hey ho ho!

Donald Trump has got to go.

The protest brought people from all ages and backgrounds.

I'm out here because I'm 18 years old and very queer, and I would kind of like to have a wife and kids one day.

And having a family is super important to me.

And if I have to get out here in 90 degree weather to protest it, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

The thing that worries me the most is that, bunch of supposed gang members they sent to the El Salvador prison without so much as a hearing.

We don't know that they've committed any crimes.

We don't know anything.

Because what's next?

Could I be next?

That's how it starts.

It starts with these people on the fringes and then works his way toward the center.

And that really scares me.

Some found hope in the community protest.

It made me feel better that there are other people in the world besides my own little closeted group of Naples residents that feel the same way.

For WGCU news, I'm Amanda Inscore Whittamore with reporting from Dana Harpster, Andrea melendez and Eileen Kelly.

I come away from an event like this with 100% comfort, that innovation will bring us to the next level.

The brightest minds in aerospace, biotech and artificial intelligence shared their ideas and innovations at this year's Edison Awards.

The annual gathering in Fort Myers gives innovators the chance to meet and learn from some of the most brilliant people in their respective fields.

WGCUs Teddy Byrne learned how these connections are helping entrepreneurs take their businesses to the next level.

So far.

What I see, though, is the difference between a scientific breakthrough in the laboratory and the scientific breakthrough that can go to market.

Andrea Cates knows an innovative business when she sees one.

As the entrepreneur in residence at MIT, she is used to seeing people take complex ideas and transform it into a business model.

At MIT, the question is always, what are the technologies that have the potential?

And you know, how do you make it work in an R&D perspective in many different industries?

People get stuck and can't get through, and therefore fantastic ideas die on the vine to instead help these imagine its ideas blossom.

The Edison Awards provide multiple avenues for upstart and established companies to learn and grow.

During panel discussions, speakers from different backgrounds share tips on how to build brand culture to spark inspiration and innovation.

That's the real reason that we're here, is in order to be with like minded people that are going through some of the same types of issues, but more importantly, also the people who come to look at all of these new innovations and trying to figure out where the world is going.

Companies that have been nominated for their breakthroughs take part in the Innovators Showcase, a hands on exhibition that gives a look at the technologies intended to shape the world.

The products varied from aerospace services to new construction methods, offering a snapshot of how technology will shape consumerism for the foreseeable future.

It's very special for us because a lot of the innovation that we're looking at in it, not only in this room, but worldwide, a lot of it are things that are coming up the road.

Okay.

We don't know if they're going to be here a year from now, two years from now, ten years from now.

The annual technological platform continues to grow, and this year's Edison Awards recognize multiple companies with their achievements.

The next step take what was learned over the course of the event and apply it to the organization's future.

As a startup, your goal is to obviously expand and figure out how you can bring the most impact.

And so talking to people who have done that, it's an awesome opportunity to get wonderful advice and direction on how we can expand our impact.

An organization like the Edison Awards community is perfect for giving people the reinforcement, the peer support, and the inspiration, quite frankly, that people need to get to that next level and actually have their fantastic ideas not die on the vine, but instead reach their full commercial potential.

For WGCU news, I'm Teddy Byrne.

In the near future.

Could humans eliminate food waste or create fuel from seawater, or bring fast and affordable connectivity to people everywhere?

Using beams of light?

Well, what was once considered science fiction is becoming reality.

Thanks to brilliant scientists and techies at research hubs like the moonshot factory that innovation lab is called X.

It's formerly known as Google X, and that's where breakthrough technologies are being applied to some of the world's biggest issues.

And to tell us about some of the inventions and solutions in the works is Clarence Wooten an executive and entrepreneur in residence with X. Clarence, welcome.

Thank you for being here with us.

Thank you for having me.

It's a pleasure being here, and I'm glad you made the distinction because since Twitter was renamed X. Yep.

Lots of people have, you know, a little confusion, but we were the original X.

We were called Google X, so now we're X, the moonshot factory.

So I want to understand that name, Moonshot Factory.

Why that name?

How did how does this work?

It's certainly more than a think tank, right?

Well, when you think about we first put people on the moon, how difficult that was.

A lot had to happen in order to send people to the moon.

And in America, we we led that innovation.

We landed astronauts on the moon.

And so when we talk about moonshots, we think about things that are incredibly hard to achieve.

And so more, you know, so as it relates to what we do at X, we don't just want to build companies that are one X better.

We want to build things that are harder to do and ten x better.

For example, X created a company called Waymo, which is a self-driving car company.

And that's been probably ten plus years in the making.

And it's not the kind of project that any, any entrepreneur could have taken on ten years ago.

Right?

Right.

It really required the resources of of Google and Google's talent and innovation abilities to be able to bring Waymo to market.

So I know you lead some talented teams there.

How do you decide what you know, what areas you're going to take on, what ideas you take on and what gets left behind on the cutting room floor?

Yeah.

It's it's an iterative process.

It's one that no one individual controls.

Oftentimes we'll spend oftentimes we'll spend years working on something.

And then once we realize that the technology hasn't gone in the direction that we think it will go, or it doesn't have the proper unit economics to make sense, to turn it into a business, then we will cut it before we launch it into the world as an independent alphabet company.

So how large a role is artificial intelligence AI playing in the development of these technologies, these solutions?

Well, I has been playing a tremendous role for inside of Google for a number of years.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently stated on an earnings call, I believe that AI is responsible for about 25% of the, coding that's done all across Google.

So not just at Google X, but across all of alphabet.

AI plays a big role, and I'm sure that will increase.

So help us to understand the big picture here the development of artificial intelligence.

AI, my understanding is will literally change the future of people on this planet in ways that we just can't even imagine now.

Right.

I mean, how big of an impact a transformation will I have on the world?

I think we're on the precipice of creating a digital species.

Right.

So when you think about mankind in mankind's development, you know, it's all been measured in terms of productivity, right?

So we're a lot more productive today than we were 100 years ago.

Right now, in productivity, will be taken over by because AI is actually smarter than us.

And that will probably continue to be the case.

However, that's going to sort of push the pace of innovation like never before.

And positive ways and in ways that we're not sure of, but is certainly no putting the genie back in the bottle.

Right.

So I think we need to leverage it and embrace it so that we can all become connects better.

I know you're speaking to students here at Florida Gulf Coast University.

What's your message for them folks?

Out of great, brilliant ideas?

Don't know how to get it off the ground.

Get it to market.

Yeah.

You know, I just want to, you know, because I think when I came out of college, I, I only want to say how long ago, when this, the world was a lot different than it is today.

I know that there are a lot of students and young people who are a little bit, worried about how AI is going to impact their ability to land jobs, etc.. One of the great things about Florida Gulf Coast University, you know, finding about is it's entrepreneurship school.

And so, you know, if you're an entrepreneur, you really need to learn to leverage AI even if you're not an entrepreneur.

Because if you don't leverage AI, you're going to lose out on job opportunities to individuals who do.

So I believe everyone needs to be able to tell themselves by leveraging the AI tools prompts agents.

And so that's what I'm here to talk about, how to leverage AI, because there's no putting the genie back in the bottle.

That's right.

Clarence Wooten we're so grateful that you stopped by.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you for having me.

It's been great.

To them.

It's very cool.

But to me it's just another day in the garage.

After the break.

Programing the perfect team.

How?

A collection of high school students are leaving their mark in competitive robotics.

A tech dynasty has been brewing right here in southwest Florida.

The first robotics team, Jabba the Hutt, is heading back to the World Championships for the third time in four years.

Comprised of 11 high schoolers from Sarasota to Naples, they look to add another title next week during the first championship in Houston, Texas.

WGCUs Teddy Byrne caught up with the team to learn what it takes to build a winning bot.

And so we, we designed everything from scratch.

We programed everything from scratch just from the ground up in preparation for this year's robotic competition season.

Dhruva Sharma leaned on experience.

Already a world champion.

He is a team captain of the group known as Java the huts as the anchor for the cadre of high school tech wizards.

He ran a tight ship to make sure their new droid, Han not so solo, met the high standards of the winning program.

As you can imagine, a robot like that, there's a lot that goes into it, so you have to build it.

If the designer, you have to program it, and that's not something that just one person can do or just a few people can do.

So we have a build team, a programing team, and then an outreach team.

And those two teams do very different things that are all beneficial towards winning the state championship like we just accomplished.

The competitions are organized by first, a nonprofit organization that uses robotics to inspire the next generation of science and technology leaders.

While development and programing are critical in being competition ready.

Public outreach is just as important both in obtaining sponsors to help finance the journey and showing professionalism on game day.

So first, as a program is designed to not only develop and spark a passion for first, but then to develop and foster skills.

In Stem, both hard and soft.

You're judged overall, not just on your robot design and your robot performance, but on how you conduct yourself as a team.

Each year, teams are given new missions for their robots to accomplish, giving groups like Jabba the Hutt a new task to challenge their programing and driving skills.

The objective this year, as it is every year, is to score as many points as possible.

What changes is it how you do that?

So this year it was using these, which is called samples.

You pick these up, the samples from a pit inside of the middle of the field.

And then your robot takes that to the corner of the field where there is a bucket on top of a pole.

Your robot lifts that up, dumps it inside the bucket, and that's worth eight points.

The second way, these scores by again obtaining a sample from inside the pit.

Your robot brings it to a different corner.

You have a human player which is able to interact with the robot.

Your robot gives your human player the sample.

Human player takes a sample, puts the clip on top, and now it's a specimen.

Your robot takes a specimen and then clips it onto a bar that's around that pit.

And then that's worth ten points.

Following a season full of scrimmages, meets and eventually league and state championships.

Jabba the Hutt has been tweaking their robot to ensure it had everything it needed to compete at worlds.

The learning experience that's part of the thrill of the tech inspired journey.

A lot of it is you do fail.

You do make mistakes.

Over time, you just you develop these skills and you develop.

I think confidence is the most important thing that you're really, generating.

For WGCU I'm Teddy Byrne.

Coming up next week.

Staying in step when traveling the world, we hit the stage with travel host and dancer Michaela Malusi and why she thinks we should add dancing to our travel itinerary.

Plus, she shows us some moves from her own family's Italian culture.

Join us for that story and much more next week.

And don't forget, we've got extended interviews waiting for you and any segments of Southwest Florida and folks you might have missed.

It's all on our WGCU news YouTub channel, so be sure to like and subscribe!

We'll see you next week.

And until then, have a great week everyone!