A PBS Frontline report on the Haiti Deportation Crisis includes rare access and interviews with Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, where an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 reside.
“One of the powers of documentary is to put us inside rooms that we normally can't get into, we wouldn't be in,” Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Bognar told WYSO-FM in Yellow Springs about the Frontline film airing 10 p.m. tonight, Oct. 20, on WCET-TV, WPTD-TV and PBS nationwide.
Bognar spent six months with Frontline producers “to bear witness to the ongoing deportation crisis impacting our Haitian neighbors in nearby Springfield Ohio,” Bognar posted on Facebook Monday. “This is a story of courage and dignity in the face of government dehumanization and cruelty.”
Bognar filmed an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid and a father wearing an ankle tracking monitor. He was recording in the Haitian Support Center when news broke of the suicide of Pierre Damas Bel, 20, who had recently lost his temporary protective status (TPS).
“And I was lucky to be honored and trusted to be filming at Central Christian the day the Supreme Court ruling came out, ending TPS,” he tells WYSO-FM reporter Kathryn Mobley.
“These are moments when people's lives are literally changing and to be there with a camera and trying to bear witness to these hard moments, historic moments, and be a responsible journalist and be thoughtful as a human being, it's a very important space to try to do right in,” says Bognar, who won a 2020 Academy Award with the late Julia Reichert for best documentary for American Factory, filmed in the Dayton suburb of Moraine. They also won an Emmy Award for American Factory and A Lion in the House, a 2007 PBS series about pediatric cancer patients at Cincinnati’s Children's Hospital Medical Center.
“I filmed a Haitian man who has an ankle monitor on and is still going to work and he's trying to be a good dad to his toddler daughter, who's like 3, and she asks him, 'What is that on your on your leg?' and it's this big, bulky ankle monitor and he says, 'Oh, it's a toy. It's just a toy.' That's the coping mechanism, that's the courage and the resilience that I feel like I've seen again and again. But this individual could be deported and his daughter could be left behind, and it could be terrible for them.”
The 30-second Frontline promotional trailer shows scenes from Springfield and correspondent Sebastian Walker reporting on violence in Haiti.
Here’s the Frontline description of the show:
In 2026, as part of its immigration crackdown, the Trump administration ended an immigration program that provided temporary legal status for hundreds of thousands of Haitians who had fled violence and upheaval for the U.S. The administration said Haiti was now safe enough for them to return home. But what is the reality on the ground?
In Haiti Deportation Crisis, with rare access, filmmakers Adam Desiderio and Sebastian Walker go inside Haiti in search of answers. The documentary offers a vivid, up-close look at the extent and impact of gang violence in Haiti, the efforts to combat it, and the rising fears among Haitians in the U.S. of being deported.
Bognar and several other journalists followed ICE vehicles to a Springfield apartment building and filmed a raid in progress, he says.
ICE agents “were pounding on the door of a Haitian person ... and they also stationed agents at other doors and inside of windows in case the person inside was going to try to run — that's my perception. And they pounded on the doors for a while and that person never opened the door. And they did not have a warrant, and they did follow the law, and did not break down the door. They actually left,” he says.
When the journalists first arrived, they were told “to stay away. At one point, either ICE agents or sheriff's officers, when we first were arriving, were waving us off from, I want to say, about 60 yards away. Now, journalists have a legal right to be, I believe, within 15, 20 feet of something, as long as we respect a certain perimeter.”
Bognar urges everyone to watch the Frontline episode.
“These are just folks trying to live their lives and contribute to society, and they have been cast as criminals and as people who are worthy of being sent to a very dangerous place. Haiti is a very dangerous place right now, and it's morally, ethically, not right to send people back there, especially women and children,” he tells WYSO-FM.
“And having had meals, sitting down and talking and eating with Haitian friends who I've now met, and Haitian folks with whom I've been filming, we all want the same thing. We want to have a job that we can do and a way to support our family and our kids. These are universal things.”
