Haitians in the U.S. brace for deportation as Trump ends their protected status

While her customers are mostly Haitians who could soon lose their jobs and even get deported, restaurant owner Ketlie Moise maintains an optimistic spirit of entrepreneurship.

Moise runs a Haitian Creole restaurant in Springfield, Ohio, called Keket Bon Gout, which occupies space in a shopping plaza that is otherwise so empty that its parking lot has grass spurting between cracks in the asphalt. 

She is about to launch another business, re-opening a long-abandoned bar called The Lantern in a nearby neighbourhood.

“The Haitian community here, we come here to work hard,” Moise told CBC News while overseeing renovations at the bar.

Moise is one of the Haitians who make up roughly one-quarter of Springfield’s population of 58,000, as high a concentration as you’ll find anywhere in the country.

In this city, a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision hits particularly hard. Last month, the top court backed U.S. President Donald Trump’s move to terminate the temporary protected status (TPS) designation that currently allows more than 300,000 Haitians to live and work in the country.

The Supreme Court ruling is scheduled to take effect next Monday. Meanwhile, employment authorizations for Haitians on TPS are set to expire this Friday, according to a directive from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 

These looming deadlines have many Haitians across the U.S. fearing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents could soon start targeting them for detention. 

Trump made Springfield’s Haitians infamous

Haitians in Springfield feel particularly at risk because of the notoriety thrust upon them when Trump made the unfounded claim during a 2024 presidential election debate that they were eating dogs and cats.

Moise says some Haitians are considering leaving Springfield to move in with friends or family who have legal immigration status in the U.S., while others are considering leaving the country for such places as “Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Canada.”

She aims to stay, as she has a pending asylum claim, which on paper gives her the ability to remain in the U.S., at least for now. 

The predominant mood among the Haitian community in Springfield is one of fear, says Carl Ruby, senior pastor of Central Christian Church and a founder of two local immigrant advocacy coalitions.

“What I hear from most people is their plan is to just go in the house, lock the door and try to wait this out,” Ruby told CBC News. 

“I think a lot of them are still hoping something’s going to happen that will allow them to stay. I don’t think that’s very likely, but it’s just a waiting situation now.”

Deportations would also hurt economy

Ruby says the arrival of Haitians in the 2010s brought new vibrancy to Springfield, a Rust Belt city that had struggled economically and shrunk to the population it had in the 1920s. 

Haitians were hired for manual labour jobs that many Americans didn’t want, including in factories, food processing and long-term care. 

“When Haitians arrived, that was the first time Springfield had grown in half a century,” Ruby said. “New businesses were coming here, existing businesses were expanding.”

Forcing thousands of Springfield’s Haitians to leave the U.S. now would hurt both them and the local economy, says Ruby. 

“I’m grieving what this means to Haitians who have become my dear friends and who are members of my church, but I’m also grieving for our city,” he said. “It’s just a huge loss, and it was totally unnecessary.” 

Trump and his administration believe that the removal of Haitians from the U.S. is far from unnecessary.  

‘Do not travel to Haiti’

The U.S. first granted Haitians temporary protected status after the 2010 earthquake that devastated their country. Ensuing administrations extended the protection, as Haiti was destabilized by gang violence.

“Do not travel to Haiti due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care,” says the current U.S. State Department warning, which has been in place since 2020.

The Trump administration announced its intent last November to terminate TPS for Haitians, saying the conditions in Haiti no longer warranted the protection (despite ample evidence to the contrary). Legal challenges kept the termination on hold until last month’s Supreme Court ruling that sided with the White House.

Geoff Pipoly, the Chicago-based lawyer who led the court challenge against the termination of TPS for Haitians, says the administration’s move runs counter to its claim that it’s focused on deporting foreign criminals. 

Haitians on TPS “work, they all have jobs, they keep their noses clean, crime-wise,” Pipoly said in an interview over Zoom. “There’s a reason that the business community in Springfield and elsewhere wants them there.”

Viles Dorsainvil, executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, is in the U.S. under TPS but also has a pending asylum claim.

Despite the uncertainty over his own future, he spends his workdays helping other Haitians navigate U.S. bureaucracy — from driver’s licences to school registration to the immigration system — as well as acting as one of the spokespeople for the community. 

“I won’t let fear stop me from doing this, even though I am in the same boat as they are,” Dorsainvil told CBC News. “We might be scared, but we have to overcome our fear for a higher purpose.” 

Some consider trying to enter Canada

He describes the mood in the community as “panicking and anxious, and a bit hopeless, too.” He says he has heard from some Haitians who have been laid off once their employers knew their work permits would expire imminently.

Some have told him they will try to enter Canada, but he is warning them about the risk of being turned back at the border and handed over to U.S. authorities. 

“As a community leader, I make sure that I tell people it’s a time to act with wisdom and try to be calm, because taking quick decisions sometimes puts you in more danger,” Dorsainvil said. 

There’s plenty of evidence around Springfield that the Haitian community is worried. 

There’s the polite but firm refusal of a clerk at a Haitian grocery store to answer any questions from a visiting journalist.

There’s the work being done by a foundation and local government to find and vet Americans willing to take temporary care of Haitian children if their parents are detained or deported. 

And there’s the steady stream of Haitians seeking help from volunteers at the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, a Catholic charity, in applying for passports for their U.S.-born children. 

As the TPS termination date approaches, Casey Rollins, the volunteer executive director of St. Vincent de Paul in Springfield, has witnessed what she describes as trauma among the Haitian community. 

“Even though they’ve known that this has been coming for some time, the reality is more and more grim every day,” Rollins said. 

She can’t fathom the decision to end TPS, given the danger that deportees would face in Haiti, where criminal gangs have near total control of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and have expanded their attacks elsewhere in the country, according to the United Nations.

Rollins relates what she heard from a young Haitian man, married with children, who has become a friend. 

“‘I would, love, love love, to be in my home [in Haiti], but I can’t,'” Rollins said the man told her. “‘I would never make it alive.'”

She had taken notes during their conversation, and read them aloud off her phone.

“‘In Haiti,’ he said, ‘the minute they know that you’ve flown back in here from the U.S.A., you’re dead.'”

A similar concern grips Benjamin Louis, another Haitian in Springfield. He had worked as an accountant in Haiti’s finance ministry government and says he was twice targeted for kidnapping before seeking asylum in the U.S.

His more imminent worry now is what happens in the country where he sought protection. 

“The fear is pretty strong in our community right now,” Louis told CBC News. 

“No one is feeling safe here in America as an immigrant, because you don’t know the next step [U.S. authorities] are going to take.”