It takes a lot to get Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, and Ohio’s former and perhaps future U.S. senator, Sherrod Brown, on the same page on anything.
After all, these two have run head-to-head campaigns against each other.
But the plight of about 15,000 Haitians living and working in Springfield, Ohio — all of whom recently have been living under the threat of being rounded up for deportation by ICE agents — has done just that.
DeWine said the Haitians living and working in Springfield and elsewhere in Ohio are productive, hard-working people who make their communities better. It would be cruel to send them back to the gang-ridden Caribbean island.
“The gangs are controlling a good part of (Haiti), it’s extremely violent; the economy is in shambles, the government does not function, the police are virtually worthless,” the governor said last week.
Brown agrees with DeWine’s assessment.
“As I travel the state, I hear the same thing that Governor DeWine has heard from Ohioans: they are concerned about their Haitian neighbors and about the economic impact the expiration of TPS (Temporary Protective Status) for Haitian Americans will have on their communities,” Brown said. “That’s why I’m calling on the administration to extend TPS for Ohio’s Haitian community now.”
The Trump administration didn’t do that.
But, Monday night, just hours before what was shaping up to be at least a month-long ICE operation in Springfield, U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes, in Washington, D.C., did just that — she ordered an extension of TPS for all 350,000 Haitian citizens currently living and working in the U.S.
And she made it crystal clear that the Department of Homeland Security and its director, Kristi Noem, should keep their hands off Haitians — in Springfield and elsewhere.
"Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants," Reyes wrote in her conclusion. "Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by our Constitution … to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that."
And Judge Reyes raked both President Trump and Vice President JD Vance over the coals for spreading lies and misinformation about Haitians in Springfield. As in Trump’s famous claim in his 2024 debate with Kamala Harris: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs — the people who came in — they’re eating the cats.” Harris laughed in his face.
There is no question the Trump administration will appeal the judge’s decision.
Tricia McLaughlin, spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said they will fight it to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary, calling Reyes an “activist judge” who “legislates from the bench.”
In the days leading up to Feb. 3, Ohio U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno called for Haitians living in Springfield to “self-deport,” by voluntarily going back to Haiti.
In an interview last Thursday with the Ohio Statehouse News Bureau, Moreno said he wants Immigration and Customs Enforcement action to be unnecessary.
“Temporary Protected Status was going to end,” Moreno said. “It was never intended to be permanent. It was always temporary. Everybody always knew the date, so we shouldn’t have to surge a force in there, to forcibly deport people who knew for a long time that they have to do that on their own.”
Clearly, Moreno’s advice was ignored by the vast majority of Haitians in Springfield.
And now, it's probably a good thing they did.
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