MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We've been spending time in the Midwest this past week, listening to voters, including in Ohio, where early turnout is surging. In Clark County, where the city of Springfield is located, election officials say they are seeing triple the number of early voters from 2022. Some people told us they are voting early because they are angry about the Trump administration's aggressive campaign to deport Haitian residents who have been living legally in the U.S. with temporary protected status - or TPS. And a warning, this story includes mentions of suicide.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOOR SHUTTING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
MARTIN: We met some of these voters at the Haitian Support Center, a bustling NGO located at the rear of High Street Church. The phones rang constantly. Clients came and went, seeking help with bills they can no longer pay because they've lost their jobs, and with immigration paperwork they hope might stave off deportation. Rose Joseph is one of the people who runs the office. She was trained as a social worker in Haiti and has been living in the U.S. with TPS. The Trump administration has since revoked TPS for Haitians. Joseph is spending more and more time coordinating transportation so others who've lost TPS can get to regular immigration court appointments, often hours away.
ROSE JOSEPH: We make sure that they are ready early, they leave early. If they have 8 a.m. appointment, we ask the driver to pick them up at 4 a.m.
MARTIN: There's a volunteer assigned to the front window to keep an eye out for ICE agents, hecklers and members of a group called the Blood Tribe. Here's Marjory Wentworth and Betsy Director. They both volunteer several times a week.
BETSY DIRECTOR: Yeah. So the Blood Tribe are these neo-Nazis. And they've come a few times. I mean, that's why we had a hundred...
MARJORY WENTWORTH: It's not very many of them but...
MARTIN: Wait a minute, you had neo-Nazis come here?
WENTWORTH: Yeah.
DIRECTOR: Yeah.
MARTIN: How'd you know?
DIRECTOR: Oh, want to see the pictures?
MARTIN: Wentworth shows us a video on her phone taken only a few weeks ago of the group in all-black uniforms waving swastika flags. We also met James Fleurijean, another caseworker at the support center.
JAMES FLEURIJEAN: The hate is the minority, I believe.
MARTIN: You think the hate is the minority?
FLEURIJEAN: It is. If it was the majority, there wouldn't be any Haitian here, believe me.
MARTIN: But the hate is there, amplified, if not set off by President Trump, who first maligned Springfield's Haitian community to a national audience by falsely claiming in a 2024 presidential debate that they were eating people's pets. He's still doing it on the midterms campaign trail. Here's Trump at a rally in Vandalia, Ohio, earlier this month.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Springfield, Ohio. Do you know that story? It's a very sad story.
MARTIN: Trump's false statements about Haitians in Springfield have continued as recently as two weeks ago.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: Remember, during the debate, I said some of the things they were doing. I was right.
MARTIN: Trump has also claimed Haitians have caused Springfield to decline. But city officials have repeatedly said it is the opposite, that the labor and taxes of Haitian migrants have been helping to revitalize the city. James Fleurijean says that's his story.
FLEURIJEAN: There were a lot of jobs. This is why a lot of Haitian, they came here. It was the message like, math to math. There's a lot of, like, factories, like, closing due to lack of employee, as you can tell.
(SOUNDBITE OF PHONE CHIMING)
FLEURIJEAN: Some of them would work seven days a week. They would do overtime.
MARTIN: That was Fleurijean's phone. It was ringing throughout our conversation. His clients often reach out to him directly. One of those clients was a college student named Pierre Damas Bel. He wanted help trying to get the ankle monitor removed that ICE forced some Haitians to wear when they lost TPS.
FLEURIJEAN: He was sitting here in this chair where you sit. And he was telling me how he was feeling about this ankle shackle. Before that, he had already gone two times himself to the ICE facility because he got a letter from the coach, asked that they remove it so that he could play soccer. And he was rejected. And he got a second one from his school. He got rejected. The next thing I heard, that was his father walking through the door and say his son just suicided.
MARTIN: Pierre Damas Bel had walked into traffic. His death was ruled a suicide. He was 20 years old.
FLEURIJEAN: Every time I pick my phone up, I listen to the last voice message.
MARTIN: He plays Damas Bel's last message for us.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PIERRE DAMAS BEL: (Through interpreter) I'm not really scared. But it's like, they put this thing on my ankle, man. So when I'm walking, I need to put on big pants. And even if I'm wearing big pants, people will know that I'm wearing an ankle monitor. A lot of Americans know what it is once they see your ankle. They know that you're a criminal that they just released. And I feel like this is a problem.
MARTIN: And Fleurijean says he has other clients in despair.
FLEURIJEAN: I've seen 70, 65 years old women come here in office and start crying, making very big noise and say, I want to kill myself.
MARTIN: How are you doing?
FLEURIJEAN: I'm good.
MARTIN: What's keeping you going?
FLEURIJEAN: The people. If you're helping them, if you fall, the whole people are going to fall, too.
(SOUNDBITE OF WRAPPERS CRACKLING)
MARTIN: A few blocks away, the local chapter of a Catholic humanitarian group, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, is bustling as volunteers assemble food boxes. The need for them is greater now that many Haitian residents aren't allowed to work anymore without TPS. Karen Duncan (ph) is pulling from neat stacks piled on a table.
KAREN DUNCAN: Beans, rice, lentils.
(SOUNDBITE OF WRAPPERS CRACKLING)
DUNCAN: Apple sauce. Whoops.
MARTIN: Another volunteer, Clara Copeland, beckons us to her station. She's the widow of Springfield's former mayor, Warren Copeland.
CLARA COPELAND: Somehow, I inherited this. It's hygiene bags. So a hygiene bag goes with each food box. I need laundry detergent, dish soap, shampoo, body wash, deodorant.
MARTIN: A call for more hygiene products goes out every Monday. And the donations keep coming in. The volunteers here say that is just one sign of broad support for the Haitian community.
UNIDENTIFIED VOLUNTEER: I think the haters...
COPELAND: I just think there's...
UNIDENTIFIED VOLUNTEER: ...Who dramatize lies about our Haitian neighbors picked on the wrong community. And when the lies were trumpeted on the national media during the campaign, I think people just decided, no, not in our town.
MARTIN: It's an election year. And I'm wondering if anybody feels that what's happened to the Haitian community that can't vote is affecting the way that people who can vote are thinking about this election.
UNIDENTIFIED VOLUNTEER: One hundred percent. We're mad. We're voting.
DUNCAN: I've already voted. Probably most of us have already voted.
MARTIN: I have to ask, though, do you feel hopeful that something good can happen?
UNIDENTIFIED VOLUNTEER: Deep sigh, all of us. Group sigh.
COPELAND: Ask us after Election Day.
MARTIN: A day that a lot of people say can't come too soon.
(SOUNDBITE OF GILLIAN WELCH SONG, "LOOK AT MISS OHIO") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
