Why This Might Be a Grim Week for the Haitians of Springfield, Ohio
You will recall, I’m sure, the story of the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio that arose during the most recent presidential campaign. It started in July 2024, when JD Vance—just days before Donald Trump tapped him as his vice-presidential nominee—began railing against this community of about 15,000 people, saying Springfield had been “overwhelmed” by their arrival. The lies and calumnies escalated until September, when, on the basis of an unverified and untrue internet rumor, Vance charged that Haitians were stealing and eating people’s pets. “Reports now show,” he wrote, “that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who should not be in this country.”
Many of the Haitians in Springfield have been living under a program called Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which the United States grants to certain immigrant groups from countries under extreme duress. In this case, the duress took the form of a 2010 earthquake that killed some 200,000 people. Things got worse still during a period of unrest following the assassination of President Jovenel Moises in 2021.
TPS is just what the name says: temporary. And for a portion of this community, that protection expires at midnight on Tuesday. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, surprise surprise, revoked TPS status for some 300,000 Haitians nationwide last year, setting this February 3 as the date. After that, they will no longer be able to work or live legally in the United States. What is the Trump administration going to do?
It’s a question that has the Haitian community of Springfield quaking. Carl Ruby, a Springfield pastor, told a local television station last week: “They are making preparations to stay inside, not to come out of their homes. They are afraid for their children. Just yesterday, I had some Haitians in our church give me power of attorney in case they become separated from their children so we can take care of them. They are afraid.”
ICE, we have been told, is “moderating” its behavior and procedures under Tom Homan (no one’s idea of a moderate). I guess we’ll see this week how true that is. In any case, Pastor Ruby is not alone, and is not remotely a hysterical voice. Even Republican Governor Mike DeWine has taken a reasonably admirable stand here. DeWine said Friday, “These people are working and they are hard workers, so I think from a public policy point of view, it is a mistake. It is not in the best interest of Ohio for these individuals who are working and who are workers to lose that status. Having said that, this is not my decision. This is a decision for the federal government, for the president of the United States.” (DeWine also defended the community back during the campaign, when Vance was spreading his racist, fascist lies.)
There is good reason for concern. As Timothy Snyder detailed on his Substack Sunday, Trump picked up Vance’s baton with a vengeance. In his September 10 debate with Kamala Harris, he said: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what is happening in our country and it’s a shame.” As Snyder wrote: “One of the moderators pointed out that there was no evidence for any such claim. Trump then said that he had seen ‘people on television’ complaining that their dogs had been eaten. There were no such television reports.”
Trump later went further. Three days after the debate, speaking to reporters in Los Angeles, he said: “We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country. And we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora [Colorado].”
I don’t know about you, but if I were a Haitian in Springfield living here under TPS, seeing those words, and watching generally the mayhem that ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents have been wreaking upon this country, yes, I’d be worried.
Last Friday, MS NOW’s web site reported, “according to four people familiar with the discussions,” ICE operations in Springfield could begin this week. The matter now rests in the lap of U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes. She is expected to make a decision, perhaps before Tuesday, on whether the Trump administration acted lawfully in ending TPS for the Haitians. She is a Biden appointee and is herself an immigrant, from Uruguay. These facts give us reason to hope she’ll rule against the administration. Emily Brown of Ohio State University’s immigration law clinic told cleveland.com that based on her questioning during arguments, her “educated guess” was that Reyes “is likely to find that the termination was unlawful, and she is likely to block it.”
Let us pray that this is so. And let us use this story as a reminder of how fascist lies against a beleaguered racial minority work. You really should read Snyder’s full post, which I linked to above. He dives deeply into the whole sordid history of how this lie got its pants on, including its promotion, once Vance took it up, by a neo-Nazi group.
Snyder’s headline is stark: “Ethnic Cleansing in Ohio?” Is that overstating what could happen? Maybe. And yet, here’s a portion of the official definition of ethnic cleansing by a UN commission appointed to study what happened in the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia: “… a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”
It is at best debatable. But that just leaves us asking: How in the world has it come to pass that in the United States in the year 2026, we even have to debate whether our country might start engaging in ethnic cleansing?