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(CNN) - Patrick Joachin queued at a police station in the capital of the Bahamas, Nassau, hoping to obtain a document proving that he has a clean criminal record and finally travel to the United States.
"I have nothing left here, no home, no job, no family," said Joachin, who was evacuated from the Dundas Town neighborhood in Abaco on Saturday.
About 17% of all Bahamians were suddenly homeless after Hurricane Dorian swept through neighborhoods and uprooted houses from the foundations. 70,000 people have lost almost everything.
Joachin wants to take a flight to Tampa, Florida, where his mother and sister live, and stay there until it is safe to return to Abaco. If he does not reach the United States, Joachin has nowhere else to go.
- READ: 'They are fighting for water to bathe. Water to drink'. Evacuees describe the devastation in Bahamas after Dorian
So far, some 5,000 people have been able to escape from the Abaco Islands, greatly affected by the cyclone. Many others remain trapped in northern Bahamas in precarious conditions.
Residents sleep in houses that are still standing but not necessarily safe.
"Many people here live in homes that are not suitable for living here in Freeport and Grand Abaco," said Patrick Oppmann of CNN on Tuesday from Freeport.
And those are the lucky ones.
In a single city, Marsh Harbor, satellite images show that some 1,100 buildings were destroyed, according to the Map Action humanitarian aid agency.
On the Grand Bahama Island, residents "worry about eating spoiled food because many markets lost their generators," Oppmann said.
"There is a black market for bread now and every little article that ... we all take for granted."
On Tuesday, nine days after Dorian made landfall in the Bahamas with winds of 185 mph, “we are still without electricity. Still without water, ”said Oppmann.
Some families queue for hours trying to get help. Many include young children.
"It's understandable that many people, especially if they have young children ... just don't want to take a risk," Oppmann said. "They just don't want to live in the conditions in which we are forced to live now."
- READ: Dozens of evacuees from the Bahamas were ordered to get off a ferry going to the US.
Temporary protection status will not be an option for Bahamians, says the US.
The Trump administration will not grant a form of humanitarian aid known as a Temporary Protected State or TPS to Bahamians affected by Dorian, according to a government official.
Trump government officials finally decided that TPS was not an option for Bahamians due to established legal obstacles, the time it would take to provide help, and the number of people who would be eligible, according to the official.
The TPS applies to people who would face extreme difficulties if they are forced to return to their home countries devastated by armed conflict or natural disasters, therefore, protections are limited to people already in the United States. Bahamians who have not yet arrived in the United States probably would not benefit from the protections.
CNN contacted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of State, which is one of those who generally participate in the consultation, for comments. The State Department referred the questions to DHS, which has not yet responded.
Some countries affected by hurricanes have been designated to be beneficiaries of TPS in the past. In the late 1990s, Honduras and Nicaragua were designated for TPS after Hurricane Mitch. And more recently, Nepal was designated for TPS in 2015 after an earthquake that killed more than 8,000 people there.
The struggle to find refuge
The Prime Minister of the Bahamas, Hubert Minnis, said evacuees will be able to return. But nobody knows how long it will take to recover the devastated islands.
"I want to assure the evacuees that as we begin to rebuild their communities they will be returned to their homes," said Minnis.
Many Bahamians have already had difficulty seeking refuge, both inside and outside the country.
By Sunday, all emergency shelters in the capital city of Nassau were full, the Pacific Disaster Center reported, according to USAID.
Over the weekend, about 119 ferry passengers waiting to evacuate Grand Bahama to Florida were told to get off a Balearia Caribbean boat if they didn't have visas, the ferry operator said.
- READ: "There is nothing here": the future is uncertain for 70,000 people in the Bahamas left homeless by Dorian
The US Customs and Border Protection Office (CBP) has said the operator did not properly coordinate the evacuation in advance.
The ferry operator, Balearia, apologized for the "difficulties and inconveniences" that passengers experienced. But Balearia also said he received conflicting information.
"We approached these passengers with the understanding that they could travel to the United States without their visas, only after being warned that to travel to Fort Lauderdale they required prior authorization in person from the immigration authorities in Nassau," Balearia said in A statement Monday night.
Stephen Silvestri, acting port director for the CBP in Port Everglades, said the ferry operator ordered evacuees to get off the boat, not any US government entity.
On Tuesday, the interim commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection. UU. He clarified the rules.
"The requirements remain the same for anyone trying to come to the United States ... They need travel documents, including a visa," said CBP interim commissioner Mark Morgan.
“The captain of that ship knows it. And I knew that if I came to the United States with people without travel documents, it would have taken us a long time because we are going to do what we always do, which is to properly examine them all. And if they don't have those travel documents, it's really going to delay the process. What he wanted to do was keep coming and going and making as many trips 'as possible'. ”
But in some cases, Bahamians who do not have travel documents can still enter the United States.
"We are trying to achieve that balance," Morgan said. “We do not want this massive exodus from Bahamas… but those people who do arrive in the United States who do not have travel documents, of course… we will apply discretion on a case-by-case basis. We are not going to deny someone just because they don't have travel documents. ”
Countless people are still missing, and the death toll will probably increase
The official death toll in the Bahamas is now 50, police said. Authorities found 42 bodies on the Abaco Islands and eight bodies on the Grand Bahama Island.
There are still an unknown number of missing people, said the Bahamas National Emergency Management Agency.
Many could be buried or trapped under mountains of rubble. Others may have been swept away by torrential and submerged storms.
Funeral homes in Marsh Harbor, the largest city in Abaco, said diving equipment was needed to recover some of the submerged bodies.
"We anticipate the discovery of more deceased people as the search and recovery process progresses," said the Royal Bahamas police commissioner.
USAID Administrator Mark Green said parts of the Bahamas looked "almost as if they had dropped nuclear bombs."
Marilyn Laing, a High Rock resident in Grand Bahama, said she cannot describe how catastrophic the damage is.
"I have no words to say how bad," Laing said. "Maybe one in 10 houses is standing."
- Rosa Flores and Kevin Conlon of CNN in Lake Worth, Florida; Alla Eshchenko in Nassau, Bahamas; Nicole Chavez and Chandler Thornton in Atlanta; and Priscilla Alvarez in Washington contributed to this report.
Bahamas, Hurricane Dorian
