In 2010, Haitian immigrants began fleeing Haiti due to extreme political instability, chronic poverty, and severe gang violence that escalated following natural disasters like the 2010 earthquake and the 2021 presidential assassination. Drawn by the low cost of living and manufacturing work, they were independently drawn to Springfield, Ohio.
Today, an estimated 30,000 Haitian migrants live with temporary protected status (TPS) in the town whose population is fewer than 60,000 residents. Backed by the Supreme Court's recent 6-3 vote supporting the his order to end their TPS, President Donald Trump wants to send the migrants home.
"First of all, the courts have upheld the administration's authority to revoke temporary protected status," notes Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). "By its very definition, it is supposed to be temporary. In the case of Haiti, these people have had temporary protected status since 2010. That's 16 years ago. At some point, it ceases to be temporary."
Though Gov. Mike DeWine (R) has complained that the Haitians should not be sent back to their homeland, Mehlman says the Trump administration has both the legal and the logical authority to say it is time to go.
"Whether a governor of a particular state likes this or not, he has no authority to interdict or to preempt the federal government's authority to carry out its policies and carry out the laws of the United States," the FAIR spokesman notes.
For 16 years, the federal government under different administrations has said the Haitians with TPS will have to return home.
Mehlman says Gov. DeWine is "certainly free to raise his objection, but there doesn't seem to be much that he can do about it."
As the Trump administration has also moved to cancel or restrict TPS designations for immigrants from places like Syria, Venezuela, and several African, Asian, and Latin American countries, Mehlman expects the president will carry this effort out in Ohio and the other 49 states as well.
