Haitian immigrants and their supporters marched out of Springfield, Ohio, on a misty Wednesday morning to draw attention to their struggles. The group embarked on a four-day pilgrimage to Columbus with demands related to their situation since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.
As many as 15,000 Haitian immigrants were living in Springfield, many with temporary protected status, until Trump and the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court ended it in late July. That means they were here legally, and had established new lives after an earthquake devastated their already-shaky home country in 2010.
Conditions in Haiti have only deteriorated since, and the government has almost ceased to function. Gangs are using murder, kidnapping and child rape to project their power ever further. Some from Springfield have already been rounded up, imprisoned and deported back to what Gov. Mike DeWine called “hell.” That treatment has come to people who committed no crime, Pastor Reginald Silencieux of the First Haitian Evangelical Church of Springfield said through an interpreter.
“We’ve had some people who lost their TPS and some of them have been deported and the League of Haitian Pastors are heartbroken by that,” Silencieux said. “People should not be treated that way. These are good people and humane people.”
Silencieux said he’d been in communication with some of his congregants since their forced return to Haiti. “It’s a tragedy,” he said. “Can you imagine? You come to Springfield. You work to build the economy. You grow your family. You do everything right, and they just snatch everything away from you. They take away your house. They take away all your belongings. Now (I’m) witnessing their suffering in Haiti. They’re not able to make it. It’s a catastrophe.”
The influx of Haitians to Springfield helped revive a shrinking city and its economy as they filled jobs in warehouses and other places that native-born residents didn’t want. With their loss, Springfield now leads the state in year-over-year job losses. Federal job reports show the city’s labor force lost 1,100 manufacturing, leisure and hospitality jobs, contracting 2.2% in 2025 alone.
Now, the International Rescue Committee reports, Springfield’s Haitians are forced to return to a place where not only can’t they find jobs, they’re adding to a humanitarian crisis in a country where half the population lives in acute hunger.
As they undertook the first leg of a four-day journey to Columbus, the Haitians and their supporters were demanding more than just a reinstatement of protected status, which was taken away on a controversial legal basis.
Silencieux said the abuse of Haitians who had protected status starts well before deportation. Some have been arrested by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and locked up in private, for-profit prisons or county jails run by sheriffs seeking federal money to pad their budgets. Others were summoned to ICE offices to be fitted with ankle monitors. Silencieux said the former is breaking up families and the latter is a deep insult to descendants of slaves.
“This system of prisons in America, we’re not used t
