“We want you here”: Springfield rallies—and grieves—after SCOTUS clears path to deport Haitians

Immigrants, faith leaders, and advocates in Springfield, Ohio, had cautiously hoped that when the Supreme Court decided whether to allow the expiration of Haitians’ Temporary Protected Status (TPS), they would celebrate outside City Hall. Instead, as the clouds over downtown Springfield cleared Thursday evening, they hastily gathered to grieve together. Hours earlier, the Supreme Court cleared the path for the Trump administration to deport 340,000 Haitians and Syrians back to the violence- and disaster-stricken nations they had fled. In a small city where up to a quarter of its residents are Haitians with TPS, the decision feels personal—and fatal: For Haitians who will be forced to return to an unsafe country, some after years of living in Springfield, and for a community that has grown to love and rely on their immigrant neighbors.

Before the gospel and protest songs, prayers, and calls to action, immigration advocates took to the podium to share urgent messages for the Haitian members of their community, first in English, then in Haitian Creole. “If you wish to stay in the United States, and you are afraid to return to your home country, you should speak with an immigration attorney,” one said. “Our immigrant community…they need to decide what will happen with their children if they are detained.” Only a handful of Haitians were around to hear them.

Under an overhang emblazoned with channel letters spelling the phrase “forward together,” hundreds of Springfield advocates stood solemnly in sticky summer heat as an immigration attorney explained the court’s ruling and consequences. “We’ve been talking about this moment for four or five years, and it’s here,” said Kathleen Kersh, an immigration attorney with the nonprofit firm Advocates for Basic Legal Equality (ABLE). “None of us are free until all of us are free, and the way you stand up in the next year is going to define who you are.” This was where, nearly two years prior, the white supremacist group the Blood Tribe claimed Springfield as its “property.” But Thursday evening, the mostly white crowd gripped signs reading “Immigrants make America great,” “Hillbillies for Haitians,” “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Chalk-wielding children doodled on the concrete while a Haitian pastor prayed and a local choir sang songs created in Minneapolis during the wide-scale and often violent immigration enforcement operations there last winter.

Advocates told me that soon after the court’s decision came down, ABLE’s phone started ringing. On the other end of the line were Haitian immigrants, some so terrified they could only weep. The vast majority of Haitian TPS holders live in Florida. But Springfield, Ohio, was thrust under the national microscope during the 2024 campaign, when then-candidate Donald Trump falsely claimed Haitians were “eating the pets” of their American-born neighbors. Singling out Springfield, Trump promised to deport the Haitian residents there upon his reelection. The only thing standing in his way, he argued, was TPS, a humanitarian designation Congress established in 1990 for people fleeing war, natural disasters, epidemics, or unrest. Despite the “temporary” nature of TPS, many countries’ designations have been renewed for years because conditions remained unlikely to improve.

Such is the case in Haiti, which never recovered from a devastating earthquake in 2010 and whose government effectively collapsed after the 2021 assassination of its president, Jovenel Moïse. Speaking to reporters after the rally, Rev. Carl Ruby, a Springfield pastor and one of the leaders of G92, a local faith-based immigrant rights group, recalled the horrors Haitians endured before escaping to the US. He could not forget the story of the young boy he had met who watched a pack of feral hogs eat human remains that were left out in the open. “That’s what we’re sending them back to,” Ruby said. “We ought to be ashamed of that as Americans.”

Thursday morning, while waiting to learn whether the court would hand down its decision, Ruby sat with Vilès Dorsainvil under a wooden cross at Ruby’s Central Christian Church, which has become a refuge for the Haitian community and the home base for Springfield’s immigration advocates. Between the evidence of Trump’s racist claims against Haitians—calling Haiti, for example, a “shithole country” whose citizens had AIDS—and newly-discovered evidence that then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem decided to terminate TPS despite DHS officials initially recommending otherwise, they hoped the justices would at least take a more measured approach—perhaps the court wouldn’t wholly save TPS but would nevertheless recognize the racism underlying Trump’s anti-Haitian rhetoric as unconstitutionally prejudiced. Instead, in a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the justices further cemented Trump’s executive power and the inability of federal judges to limit or even question it.

Dorsainvil came to the US in 2020 and, since 2021, has lived in Springfield, where he founded the Haitian Support Center, as thousands of Haitians settled there. A TPS holder himself, Dorsainvil knows what devastation awaits Haitians in the US and back on the island. As I previously reported:

Dorsainvil’s cases are a litany of awful experiences: women and men vulnerable to human trafficking because they lost their work authorizations; families coming home to eviction notices with less than $20 in their bank accounts; people who have “nothing” and nowhere to go. There is a parallel desperation between Haitian immigrants and the families they support back home that Dorsainvil can’t ignore; if a Haitian in the US gets detained or deported, it’s a matter of “life and death” for them and every person in Haiti who relies on them.

“My hope is that the United States, including our current government, will once again place its trust in justice, compassion, and human dignity,” Dorsainvil said Thursday. “This is not the time for people to be judged by the color of their skin, the language they speak, or the country from which they come.”

Dorsainvil was among the few Haitian TPS holders who attended Thursday evening’s vigil. Organizers, legal advocates, and immigrants didn’t know what to expect: Would ICE begin mass detainments that very day? Would they appear at all? Ruby said when he and Dorsainvil met with ICE officials months ago, they warned the advocates they would take a “carrot-and-stick” approach, which meant they intended “to make life so unbearable that they leave on their own.” But where would they go? Presumably not Haiti, because the country is under the State Department’s highest travel warning, and US commercial airlines cannot fly there.

Ruby told reporters that should ICE come to town, local churches were “committed” to offering sanctuary to Haitians. Advocates, meanwhile, told me they hoped that it wouldn’t come to that point; ICE may have learned its lesson in Minneapolis, and Springfield has had years to coordinate a sprawling volunteer defense and support network. One potential option for protection advocates pointed to was the US Senate, which could advance an existing bill that would extend TPS for Haitians for three more years.

As the sun sank behind downtown Springfield’s mid-rise apartments and office buildings, the crowd dispersed almost as swiftly as it arrived. Stragglers lingered in the courtyard, embracing their neighbors, while the few police officers stationed outside City Hall unhurriedly patrolled the grounds.

Community members left with to-do lists: Donate to the Haitian Support Center and the local St. Vincent de Paul chapter, a Catholic nonprofit that immediately launched a diaper and food drive after the decision came down; call Ohio’s US Senators, urging them to extend Haitians’ TPS; keep an eye on their Haitian neighbors. But even with the community’s steadfast support, Biassu Pierre, a Haitian TPS holder and community organizer with ABLE, said in the wake of the ruling, fellow immigrants have questions he cannot answer: What will happen to my children if I am deported? How can I feed my family without lawful work? One woman, Naomi, called him in tears. Her husband was deported to Haiti in December, and he has since “disappeared.” Her three children are among the 1,300 children of Haitian immigrants who were born in Springfield, and who, as American citizens, now face the increasing likelihood of family separation.

“Haitians are not just immigration cases or statistics. We are your neighbor, your co-worker, member of your church,” Pierre told the crowd. “We love Springfield. We would like to stay, to live with you.”

“We want you here!” a man in the crowd shouted back.