With the Supreme Court expected to decide in late June or early July whether Haitians’ Temporary Protected Status can end, Springfield, Ohio—where thousands have built lives under TPS—has been forced into a kind of waiting room. Licenses and work authorization
On Feb. 2, 2026, faith leaders filled St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Springfield. Ohio. singing in support of Haitian migrants who feared the end of Temporary Protected Status. A federal judge had delayed the expiration on the eve it was set to take effect. but the threat didn’t lift—it just shifted into a new suspense. Behind the church doors. the people most affected were already living the question that now hangs over the Supreme Court: whether their legal protections will survive the next decision.
For Vilès Dorsainvil, the uncertainty is not abstract. He has been living it in real time since arriving in the United States in December 2020. when his mother insisted he leave Haiti after he began receiving anonymous threats and demands for funds. He landed in Fort Lauderdale with just enough money for rent and the responsibility of supporting a family back home. Within 72 hours, he moved to Springfield, Ohio, where his nephew already lived.
Springfield’s Haitian community had grown fast, fed by a crisis that started long before Dorsainvil arrived. Haiti had never recovered from the 7.0-magnitude earthquake in 2010. which devastated the country and helped set off prolonged food insecurity. rising gang violence. and deteriorating access to medical care. When Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021. Dorsainvil—working as a factory worker in Springfield—applied for and was granted Temporary Protected Status. a humanitarian designation created to protect people from deportation when their country is considered unsafe. As long as the Secretary of Homeland Security renewed Haiti’s TPS, Dorsainvil could live and work in Springfield.
After Moïse’s assassination, more than 100,000 people living in Haiti became eligible for TPS. Eventually, about 15,000 Haitians settled in Springfield—paying taxes, raising children, starting businesses, and taking work others wouldn’t. They also became lightning rods for anti-migrant sentiment that intensified during Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign and then his administration.
In September 2024, Trump claimed during a presidential debate that Haitians were “eating the pets” of Springfield residents. He vowed that if he won reelection, he would deport Haitians. That November, Trump won Clark County—the county where Springfield is the seat—with nearly two-thirds of the vote. During his second term. his administration came close to fulfilling the promise when then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem began the process of terminating TPS for countries being reviewed. including Venezuela. Afghanistan. and Haiti. TPS, established by Congress in 1990, is issued in 6-, 12-, or 18-month increments. Many countries have been renewed continuously for years, if not decades, because conditions remain unlikely to improve. In Haiti’s case. Noem’s announcement that TPS would not be renewed pushed Haitian families to prepare for ICE to arrive after the designation’s scheduled expiration on Feb. 3, 2026.
But the anticipated wave never came. Haitian TPS holders. including Dorsainvil’s younger brother. sued the administration. and on the eve of Haiti’s TPS expiration. a federal judge postponed it. Since then, more than 330,000 Haitians living in the U.S. with TPS have been in legal limbo while they wait for the Supreme Court to decide whether their protections can expire.
The cost of that wait has shown up differently across the country, and in Ohio it has been immediate. In mid-March, the driver’s licenses of Haitian TPS holders expired, and they were unable to renew them. Until June 5—when a federal judge in Rhode Island ruled against the Trump administration—the federal government stopped issuing work permits and processing asylum claims from Haiti and 38 other countries in Latin America. Asia. and Africa. as well as Palestine.
“It’s all about whether you leave or not to leave. ” said Emily Brown. director of the Ohio State University law school’s Immigration Clinic. “Because where are you going to go?. If you leave to go somewhere else in the USA. you will still be a target.” Brown. who provides free legal representation to immigrants facing deportation. said the sweeping halt of immigration processes makes an already broken asylum system worse. She said prior to Trump, the system had long backlogs, and that stopping processing only intensifies them.
The shutdown also blocks a crucial path for family reunification. Brown explained that immigrants can petition for immediate family to join them only after they are granted asylum or refugee status. Many of her clients—some who have been in the U.S. for years—have reached the threshold of approval and only needed an asylum officer’s sign-off. Without it, cases stall.
In Springfield. Dorsainvil said Haitians are leaving the city. though not in what he calls a “mass exodus.” Some attempted to go to Canada. Others moved toward Columbus. Yet even relocation doesn’t resolve the fear. “To leave or not to leave. ” he repeated. stressing the same dilemma: “If you leave to go somewhere else in the USA. you will still be a target.”.
His Haitian Support Center exists for the moment when stability gets knocked out from under people. It is tucked discreetly in the back of a church on Springfield’s east side, surrounded by single-family homes. A locked door carries only a sign bearing the center’s logo and welcoming visitors in English and Haitian Creole.
When Dorsainvil met with him recently, it wasn’t crowded. “When I arrived on a recent Friday afternoon. just two other people were there. ” the reporter wrote. and neither was Dorsainvil. About 45 minutes later. he arrived and ushered the reporter into a windowless room he shares with a colleague. their desks an arm’s length away. Yellow sticky notes covered the walls. More than a dozen sat beside his screens. Between calls. Dorsainvil described the work as constant—because for many families. the next crisis doesn’t wait for court schedules.
One example stuck in his mind because it involved money, time, and vulnerability all at once. He had just returned from a failed attempt to recover a $1. 900 security deposit a rental agency was holding for a woman who moved to New York. The woman took a Greyhound bus back to Springfield after neither she nor Dorsainvil could reach her property manager. When they arrived at the agency’s office that morning, the property manager was nowhere to be found. Agency staff told the woman to “Come back Monday.” She boarded a Greyhound back to New York. unable to miss work to wait until Monday. Dorsainvil promised to return himself.
There was another case layered into the same kind of harm. Dorsainvil said the woman had tried to help her younger brother apply for asylum. A New York firm told her they would do it for $24,000. She put down $3. 000 for services that Dorsainvil framed as unnecessary. especially in a world where nonprofits and immigration clinics can do the work for free.
Brown echoed that dynamic. saying some firms charge “exorbitant fees. ” while the cost of litigating asylum claims has risen as backlogs make cases longer and more complex. “Good attorneys are cost-prohibitive for a lot of people,” Brown said. “and it leads them to having to choose between funding their legal case and their basic needs.”.
For Dorsainvil, the cases he sees can look like a catalogue of desperation: people vulnerable to human trafficking because they lost work authorizations; families coming home to eviction notices with less than $20 in their bank accounts; individuals with “nothing” and nowhere to go.
He said he can’t ignore the parallel suffering back in Haiti. If a Haitian in the U.S. gets detained or deported. he said. it becomes a matter of “life and death” for them and “every person in Haiti who relies on them.” He said that same truth is why his work feels existential rather than administrative.
The Haitian Support Center’s reach is limited to the Springfield community. That means Dorsainvil cannot recover the $3. 000 from the “predatory law firm” in the New York case. nor can he help immigrants calling from Columbus or elsewhere in the state. Money for the center comes from small donations—some as little as $5. Most staff. like Dorsainvil. are Haitian immigrants. and if TPS expires. they would face the same fate as the people they serve.
He doesn’t know how much longer the center can keep paying rents and utility bills. Still, he said he feels obligated to keep going until he is forced to stop. His work and status as a high-profile Haitian TPS holder place him at significant risk. He calls it the “ultimate sacrifice.”
“Folks keep asking me what I am doing here, why I am exposing myself knowing I am not a citizen,” Dorsainvil said. “I consider myself nothing when I know—when I experience firsthand— how people are going to suffer.”
The stakes arrive against a broader federal timeline. Of 1.3 million TPS holders in the U.S. 97 percent are from just five countries. with the lion’s share coming from Venezuela and Haiti. Less than three weeks after Trump retook office. Noem announced her decision to terminate TPS for Venezuelans and began moving down the list soon after. By August 2025. DHS said it intended to terminate TPS for more than a third of the 17 countries with active designations. including Honduras. Nicaragua. Afghanistan. and Haiti. When the Supreme Court ruled in October 2025 that the Trump administration could terminate Venezuelans’ TPS even as litigation continued. the order provided no guidance for the wave of lawsuits that followed.
Haiti’s TPS protections have been granted continuously since the 2010 earthquake, through DHS or court order. Especially after 2021. Dorsainvil said. thousands have flocked to Springfield due to stable factory and warehouse work. a relatively low cost of living. and the growing presence of resettled Haitians.
Some Haitian immigrants have filled healthcare roles. Many were trained as physicians in Haiti and later moved into nursing and other healthcare jobs in Clark County. including serving as interpreters. Dorsainvil’s younger brother, Vilbrun, is one such physician turned nurse who worked at Springfield Regional Hospital. Vilbrun is also a lead plaintiff in the TPS case before the Supreme Court. Vilès said he recruited his brother, and Dorsainvil is a plaintiff in a separate federal case challenging TPS termination.
Springfield’s economy has been shaped by these arrivals. especially as the city also struggled with the Rust Belt’s depopulation as manufacturers moved out. Springfield, like other Ohio towns, was devastated by the opioid epidemic and ranked consistently among U.S. cities with the highest rates of fatal overdose. With thousands of new residents seeking work. Springfield’s tax revenue increased. its unemployment rate decreased. and nearly a dozen Haitian-owned businesses opened.
Yet even those benefits have not ended the hostility. Anti-Haitian sentiment began long before Trump and Ohio’s own Sen. JD Vance amplified it during the 2024 campaign. The spark. residents say. came in August 2023. when a Haitian TPS holder crashed into a school bus near Springfield. killing an 11-year-old boy. The driver, Hermanio Joseph, did not have a valid U.S. driver’s license because, he testified, he hadn’t yet gathered the required documents. In May 2024. a jury convicted Joseph of involuntary manslaughter and vehicular homicide—both felonies—and he was sentenced to 9 to 13 years in prison.
Trump’s targeting of Haitians split Ohio Republicans. In the House of Representatives. Springfield-area’s two Republicans joined Democrats in April to vote to extend Haitians’ TPS through April 2029. In the Senate. Ohio’s two Republican senators voted to give ICE and Customs and Border Protection $70 billion over the next three years. One of those senators, former Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, is opposing the man who appointed him to replace Vance.
Gov. Mike DeWine has repeatedly defended Ohio’s Haitian immigrants, calling ending TPS the “wrong” choice. DeWine told reporters in February that the situation in Haiti has “never been worse.” First Lady Fran DeWine said after a federal judge halted the TPS termination from going into effect that she and the governor were “happy” for both Haitians and Springfield at large. pointing to immigrants’ contributions to the economy and community. “We’re just all praying for good things to happen in Springfield for everyone,” she said.
But activists say words do not match action. DeWine has clarified that Ohio would “follow” whatever the court decides. “He’s acting like. ‘Well. there’s nothing I can do. I’m just the governor of Ohio. ’” Lynn Tramonte. executive director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. said. She compared DeWine to Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker. who responded to ICE enforcement by calling Trump’s bluff on his arrest threat and by standing behind legislation protecting immigrants at courthouses and hospitals while the federal government fought it.
In Ohio. Tramonte and others described detainees shuttled to private prisons and county jails in the northeastern and southwestern corners of the state and deported. Springfield activists also described harassment aimed at advocates. Marjory Wentworth, a Springfield resident and organizer with G92, said that some people will be glad Haitians are gone. She pointed to a burgeoning housing and homelessness crisis in Springfield. Some city officials have blamed out-of-state companies buying properties and raising rents. Wentworth said the anger and blame may be wrongfully placed on immigrants, but she understood the dynamic.
The national spotlight has had concrete fallout. Within months of Trump taking office. Clark County lost $4.25 million in federal funding. including $2.7 million from a Health and Human Services critical disease grant. Without that grant. the county health department laid off crucial staff—disease investigators and medical translators among them—and abandoned plans for a new health facility and mobile clinic. steps meant to improve access to primary and preventative care in an area with little to no public transportation.
Federal data show the Springfield metropolitan area lost more jobs than any other area in Ohio between 2024 and 2025. losing more than 1. 000 jobs. nearly all from the manufacturing industry. Between 2021 and 2022. as large numbers of Haitians began settling in Springfield and tax policies shifted to accommodate remote work. the city generated $9.2 million in income taxes. Between 2023 and 2025, income tax revenue dropped to $3 million. By June 2025. the city finance director said Springfield’s economy was at a “critical juncture. ” with income tax revenue—the “backbone” of the municipal budget—declining sharply and then stagnating. Between the loss of income taxes and the exhaustion of federal pandemic rescue funds. Katie Eviston told the city commission last June that “Our general fund is under real strain.”.
Schools and government offices also closed after bomb threats. The threats extended beyond schools. houses of worship. and government buildings. and advocates said they saw further harassment through a social media conspiracy campaign claiming local churches and community organizations were running a human trafficking scheme. stealing donations. and working with ICE to convince Haitians to self-deport.
Springfield advocates say they are trapped inside a system that can’t be negotiated at the local level. They can provide rental assistance, food drives, transportation, and know-your-rights training to prepare immigrants and advocates for ICE activity. But Wentworth acknowledged that when it comes to the ultimate future. communities have no control—only nine Supreme Court justices do.
In late April, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v. Miot and Mullin v. Doe, cases brought by Haitian and Syrian TPS holders, respectively. TPS holders argue Noem ignored the necessary process in her review of TPS for both countries. including consulting other agencies about conditions in those nations. In ending TPS for Haitians. Noem said renewing humanitarian protections would be “contrary to the national interest of the United States. ” because Haiti lacks a central government able to flag criminals attempting to enter the U.S. Even as the State Department maintains a “do not travel” advisory for Haiti citing risk of kidnappings. sexual assault. and robbery. Noem declared Haiti acceptable for repatriation.
Dorsainvil said Haitians will face the same dangers if deported back, emphasizing: “There is no safe place in Haiti.”
Trump administration lawyers argued that all aspects of Noem’s determination are immune from judicial review. Solicitor General John Sauer told the justices that ruling otherwise would open a hole “a truck could be driven through.” TPS holders’ attorneys argued that siding with the administration would write a “blank check” to enact federal policies without following required steps to prevent politicization and abuse.
In Haitians’ case. attorney Geoffrey Pipoly said Noem’s decision was motivated by Trump’s racist views and his “bare dislike of Haitians in particular.” Pipoly also pointed to the president’s promise to bolster a refugee program for white South Africans. while Trump has called Haiti a “shithole country” and said immigrants from Haiti and other nonwhite countries are “poisoning the blood” of America. “He vowed that he would terminate Haiti’s TPS, and that is exactly what happened,” Pipoly said.
The Supreme Court is expected to issue its opinion in late June or early July. Springfield advocates aren’t optimistic. but even a ruling that sides with TPS holders won’t feel like a win. Wentworth said. The administration is making it as difficult as possible for Haitians to remain and communities to support them, she argued.
Ohio State’s Brown agreed, describing the Trump administration’s immigration policy as a “mass delegalization” project, aimed at pushing people into the shadows. She said the goal is to “encourage people to just give up and leave.”
During most of a recent conversation. Dorsainvil spoke in soft. emphatic tones shaped by his theological training as a Moravian pastor. When he talked about the vulnerable people he had helped in the past week, his voice hardened with exasperation. “Why is the administration doing that?” he said he asks himself. And he offered his own answer: in the Trump administration’s view. “I see you as the other. and once I see you that way. your life. your misery. and your experience don’t matter to me.”.
United States Supreme Court Temporary Protected Status TPS Haiti Springfield Ohio Kristi Noem Clark County immigration policy asylum ICE deportation JD Vance