Alarm is spreading through South Florida's CentralAmerican communities as U.S. officials weigh ordering hundreds of thousands of temporary residents out of the country.

BY ALFONSO CHARDY

Juana García gave up seeing her children grow up so they would not go hungry.

García's youngest of four children was 3 when she left Honduras 21 years ago and headed north looking for work. The others were 7, 8 and 11. She never saw three of the children again -- the oldest, a son, came to live with her for some time -- because, as an undocumented immigrant, she couldn't travel. But she never forgot her children, sending $350 every month so that relatives could buy them food and clothes.

''I came here because of them, so they would survive,'' García said in an interview Wednesday night.

García, 52, is one of more than 300,000 anxious Central Americans who fear the Bush administration soon will order them to leave the country.

Alarm has spread through South Florida communities of Hondurans, Nicaraguans and Salvadorans, and across the nation over the possibility that the administration is considering ending a program called Temporary Protected Status. TPS allows people like García to live and work with renewable permits.

South Florida's three Cuban-American Republicans in the House, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln and Mario Díaz-Balart, plan to write a joint letter to President Bush and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff asking them not to kill TPS. The joint letter will be announced Monday at a news conference at the office of Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart in Miami.

TPS for illegal Hondurans, Nicaraguans and Salvadorans began after natural disasters struck Central America -- a hurricane in Honduras and Nicaragua in 1998, and earthquakes in El Salvador in 2001.

The programs enable illegal migrants who were in the United States when the disasters hit to remain here legally while their countries recover.

TPS work and residence permits were never intended to be permanent -- but they have become virtual entitlements because they are routinely renewed every 18 months.

As the mood of the country turns more and more against illegal immigration, some administration officials have begun lobbying for an end to TPS.

Some South Florida Central-American migrant leaders are now hoping TPS can be folded into President Bush's proposed guest worker program if Congress approves it later this year. Bush's program would grant temporary work permits to millions of illegal workers for perhaps up to six years.

''That's what we are working on,'' said José Lagos, president of Honduran Unity, a Little Havana-based immigrant rights organization that also represents Nicaraguans and Salvadorans. Lagos compared Bush's guest worker proposal to a ``giant TPS program.''

Lagos' tiny office, at 1421 SW Eighth St., has been swamped by hundreds of anxious Central Americans seeking information after a front-page article in The Miami Herald on Tuesday noted that the TPS program may be eliminated.

People who stop by Lagos' office are asked to sign a letter urging President Bush to continue the program. It expires for Hondurans and Nicaraguans in July and for Salvadorans in September. The letter also seeks legalization for all immigrants and resumption of a now-expired immigration amnesty for illegal migrants sponsored by an American citizen spouse or a U.S. employer.

Lagos is also organizing a Mass Feb. 3 at the Church of Saint John Bosco, 1301 W Flagler St., to pray for TPS renewal. The date marks the Day of the Virgin of Suyapa, an annual religious festival for Hondurans' patron saint.

Half a dozen Hondurans and Nicaraguans who dropped by Lagos' office to sign the letter to Bush on Wednesday evening agreed to tell their stories to The Miami Herald.

One of them was García, who was 31 when she made the fateful decision to find a better life in the United States.

''I had four young children and no one but me to take care of them,'' she said. ``If I had stayed in Honduras, they would not have had a real chance to make it.''

García made her way to the Mexico-Texas border. One night in 1984 she and a group of other illegal migrants crossed the Rio Grande near Laredo, Texas.

Once across, García worked in a series of odd jobs in Texas, cleaning homes or working in small Latin American cafeterias.

Eventually she saved enough money for a plane trip to Miami. Currently she works at a Hialeah factory that packs food condiments.

García's fears were echoed by other Central Americans with TPS.

Paula Durán, from Nicaragua, said she is resigned to returning home if TPS ends.

''What can I do?'' she wondered. ``It would be fate. I would have to go back, even though I have built a new life here, and life is so much more difficult there.''

Durán, 47, arrived in June 1998 from Managua. She cleans homes and regularly sends money to her two sons back home -- Esel Jocsán, 17, and Milton Uriel, 13.

''I don't know what I'm going to do if TPS ends,'' she said. "I may have to go and live in the streets.''

Iris Alvarez, 33, from Honduras, said that if she is ''deported'' she would be going back to a country where she no longer has relatives.

''My mother and brothers are now in Canada,'' she said. "I have nobody back there. I'd be homeless.''