President Trump told a rally crowd in Vandalia, Ohio, on Saturday that Springfield’s Haitian immigrants are being removed, two years after he made the city a symbol of his campaign. Speaking at Butler High School near Dayton, about 25 miles from Springfield, he dedicated his recitation of The Snake to the city, which he described as a quaint little town of 32,000 that took in 35,000 people. It did not work out too well, he said, and they are being removed.
The numbers were wrong, as they were in 2024. Springfield has about 58,000 residents and a Haitian population estimated at 12,000 to 15,000. But the sentence about removal was accurate. Since Haitian Temporary Protected Status ended on July 27, ICE has been detaining Haitians across Ohio, and at least five from Springfield have been deported, the Ohio Capital Journal reports. Hours before the rally, mourners in Springfield, including Governor DeWine, held a funeral for a 20-year-old Haitian college student whose family says the shame of wearing an ICE ankle monitor drove him to take his own life.
From Campaign Line to Policy
The rally was a midterm event for Senator Jon Husted, who is in a close race against Sherrod Brown, and for Vivek Ramaswamy’s run for governor. Trump spent most of his time on turnout, tariffs and investment announcements. The Springfield segment came as a set piece: The Snake is a 1968 song he has recited at rallies for a decade as a warning against taking in outsiders, and on Saturday he introduced it as being in honor of a city that had been through hell.
Springfield was where Trump and JD Vance, then his running mate, spread the false claim in September 2024 that Haitian immigrants were eating residents’ pets. The city’s police, mayor and Governor Mike DeWine all said it was untrue. Schools and city offices were closed by bomb threats for days. Trump said then that he would start the largest deportation in American history in Springfield, and told NewsNation he would revoke Haitians’ protected status and have them removed.
The difference now is that he has done it. The pet story is gone from his speech. What remains is the claim that the city was overwhelmed, the removal promise, and the word that it is being carried out.
Where Haitians Stand Legally
About 330,000 Haitians held Temporary Protected Status, the designation that let people from a country in crisis live and work here. The administration moved to end it in 2025, lower courts blocked the termination, and at the end of June the Supreme Court let it go forward. Status expired on July 27. Since then every Haitian whose only protection was TPS has been removable.
Enforcement has followed quickly. Haitians in Springfield have received letters ordering them to report to ICE offices in Blue Ash or Westerville for ankle monitors, and ICE has begun tracking others through the SmartLINK phone app. The Ohio Immigrant Alliance counts nearly 75 Haitians detained at the state’s four ICE contract facilities since July 27, more than double the pace before. Nationally, Haiti’s migration office recorded more than 470 deportees from the United States between August 20 and September 17, including people with pending asylum claims. Deportation flights have gone from monthly to weekly and land in Cap-Haïtien because gangs have made the Port-au-Prince airport unsafe, according to Human Rights Watch.
The country they are sent to is one the State Department tells Americans not to visit. Haiti carries a Level 4 advisory for crime, kidnapping, terrorism and unrest. The UN counted at least 1,408 people killed between April and June. Human Rights Watch found that Haitian authorities cannot provide shelter, food, safe transport or medical care to deportees; arrivals get a meal, about 77 dollars and a police registration, then are on their own.
Congress has one bill in motion. The House voted in April to extend Haitian TPS through 2029. It sits in the Senate, and the White House has said Trump would veto it. Senator Chris Van Hollen has introduced a separate bill giving TPS holders a path to citizenship, which faces long odds in a Republican-controlled Senate.
What This Means for Haitians in Ohio and Beyond
For Haitians who lost TPS, Saturday confirmed that there is no political reprieve coming from the White House, and that Springfield in particular will stay in the spotlight. Pastor Carl Ruby of Central Christian Church told a Senate hearing last week that families there are hiding behind locked doors, that his Haitian congregation dropped from about 50 regular worshippers to two after ICE arrived, and that churches are delivering food, paying rent for people who can no longer work and driving children to school because parents are afraid to leave the house.
The practical priorities, in order:
If you have any other claim to status, file it now. Some Haitian TPS holders also qualify for asylum, have a U.S. citizen spouse or adult child who can petition for them, or are eligible for a green card through an old family petition. TPS ending does not close those doors, but detention makes them far harder to walk through.
If you receive a letter ordering you to report to ICE, do not ignore it and do not go alone. Missing a check-in is treated as absconding. Go with a lawyer or an accredited representative, bring proof of any pending application, and know that an ankle monitor or SmartLINK enrollment is not the same as a removal order.
If you are detained, you have the right to a hearing before an immigration judge, and if you fear return to Haiti you have the right to ask for asylum, withholding of removal or protection under the Convention Against Torture. Tell the first officer you see that you are afraid to return to Haiti, and repeat it to everyone after that; the request has to be on the record before you can be put on a plane.
Free help exists. In Springfield, the Haitian Community Help and Support Center is the first call. Statewide, the Ohio Immigrant Alliance tracks detentions and connects people to lawyers. Anywhere in the country, the Department of Justice keeps a list of free immigration legal providers by state.