MIAMI -- Florida Sen. Bill Nelson met with leaders of Miami-Dade County's Haitian-American community Monday after returning from a fact-finding mission in Haiti.

The senator spent much of the past weekend traveling through parts of Haiti to understand the core issues that have long plagued the Caribbean nation. Haiti is considered the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and rampant crime, corruption and widespread poverty have continued to keep the country's economy unstable.

On Monday morning, Nelson addressed a group of South Florida's Haitian leaders and advocates in his Coral Gables office about his findings.

Nelson told the group that the U.S. must do more to help the struggling nation protect itself against the illegal drug trade.

"What Haiti needs is the United States to help train more personnel so that they can station them all around the country," Nelson said. "For example, the Haitian Coast Guard does not even have a presence on the southern coast of Haiti, and that's where all the planes come in. The drugs, in turn, end up on our streets."

Nelson also drafted a letter to the White House, urging the Obama administration to grant temporary protected status, or TPS, to Haitian migrants who are already in the U.S.

"The United States has granted TPS to Salvadorans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans, while ignoring the dire circumstances that Haitian immigrants would face if they returned home," Nelson said in the letter.

The letter also called a lack of a move to do the same for Haitians discriminatory.

"I believe the president is going to take a very hard look at TPS and I wouldn't be surprised if in the next few months if we don't see him grant TPS," Nelson said.

Nelson tried in vain to get the Bush administration to grant a similar request. The Senator hopes the new leadership in the U.S. will help bring about new change for Haiti.