Supreme Court-backed ruling lifts stay affecting 350,000 Haitians
When Monsanto Maler walked out of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Blue Ash, Ohio, on the morning of Aug. 9 with an ankle monitor newly fastened to his left leg, he covered his face, burst into tears and fell to the ground, scattering the immigration documents he had carried under his arm. Maler came to the United States in June 2023, fleeing gangs in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti, where he had been hit on the right side of his head. He sat on the concrete, his face full of confusion. “I feel depressed, physically, mentally. I feel dizzy,” he said through an interpreter.
The episode came days after U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes lifted a stay that had previously prevented the Trump administration from ending temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of Haitians. Reyes acted after a decision from the Supreme Court backed the administration’s efforts, according to The Guardian. The ruling means about 350,000 Haitians in the United States on TPS face the end of their lives in the country.
In recent weeks, dozens of Haitian nationals living in Springfield, Ohio — some who had applied for asylum, others who held TPS — received emails from the Department of Homeland Security ordering them to report to the Blue Ash facility, often early on a Sunday morning. According to advocates and lawyers representing the Haitian nationals, the letter gave no stated reason for the requirement and no indication that a monitoring device would be attached. They said those fitted with ankle monitors will not be allowed to travel more than 75 miles from home without the consent of an immigration judge; the Blue Ash office sits at least 71 miles from Springfield.
More than 12,000 Haitians have moved to Springfield over the past decade, taking manufacturing and food packaging jobs that local companies struggled to fill. The town of about 60,000 people became the focus of the national immigration debate in September 2024, when then-presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed immigrants there were eating pets — a claim The Guardian described as false — a statement that fueled neo-Nazi marches, bomb threats and school closures.
Four hours earlier, on the same morning, Viles Dorsainvil, who heads the Haitian Support Center, and Pastor Carl Ruby of Springfield had loaded into a sedan and driven south to Blue Ash to help the arriving Haitians. Dorsainvil, himself a TPS holder, described a Haitian man who worked at a local Amazon warehouse, had TPS until 2029 and had come to his center the previous Friday seeking help. “When he got that letter, he was terrified, he got sick,” Dorsainvil said.
Ruby said he knows at least two Haitians from his congregation who have been called to Blue Ash to be fitted with monitors. He described helping one family from his church prepare to emigrate to Quebec City. “I was helping them pack. The dad had all this patriotic stuff with him,” Ruby said. “It makes me sad that what he’s going to remember from the United States is that he had to leave.”
By 7 a.m., protesters — nuns and priestesses, children and men wearing USA hockey jerseys — had lined the road in front of the building, a single-story, red-brick office with no obvious marking of its use as a federal facility. Organizers estimated about 700 people attended. Lorne Hlad, a pastor from Cincinnati who has visited Haiti six times, said, “Life there is extremely difficult. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere,” and added that “[TPS] should be renewed. Gangs control Port-au-Prince; there’s no active government. Sending people back to a country that has no infrastructure to protect them is inhumane.”
The first Haitian national arrived at 7:40 a.m., and by 8 a.m. three people, including Maler, had arrived. Thirty minutes later, a Haitian man and woman arrived and were given communion by Ruby, who had brought a vat of wine, bread and a large gold cross. “We want to give them the message that Jesus is with them,” said Ruby. “The Bible isn’t policy, but the Bible is very clear that God loves immigrants. It teaches that they are to have access to justice.”
Dorsainvil and immigration lawyers said they were assisting the Haitians to file a motion that could remove or replace the ankle monitors with devices worn on the wrist. “The wrist monitors may be slightly less stigmatizing,” said Heather Campbell, an immigration lawyer representing several of the immigrants. “But anything that differentiates you from somebody else, especially if you are part of a community that people know this is happening to, it’s going to make you uncomfortable.”
The Guardian sent questions to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, including about the stated objective of attaching ankle monitors to Haitian nationals; neither responded directly. ICE instead shared a statement: “Every day, DHS is conducting law enforcement activities across the country to keep Americans safe. DHS does not discuss ongoing or future operations.”
“It’s reminiscent of the shackles used during slavery, something the Haitian people are very familiar with, after liberating themselves from slavery in the late 18th century,” said Samantha Searl of Ignite Peace, the nonprofit leading the protest. “The ankle monitors send a message to all immigrants that they will always continue to be subjected to the violence of our punitive immigration system.”
The enforcement activity comes as American public opinion sours on ICE, with midterm elections scheduled for November. A YouGov poll released July 21 found that just 30% of those surveyed believe ICE has been using necessary and justified force in its activities.
After getting back to his feet and walking a short distance from the facility, Maler was driven away by a friend in a small sedan. On the drive back to Springfield, Dorsainvil, who said he stayed up late the previous night working on his university thesis, described the project as “a study of the economic impact of Haitian immigrants on Springfield.”