WASHINGTON — Even before Haitian immigrants in Ohio officially lost their Temporary Protected Status, the Department of Homeland Security required dozens of them to report to immigration appointments and accept ankle monitors, according to their attorneys and local advocates.

The practice of using electronic monitoring appears to only be happening in Springfield, Ohio, according to a half dozen advocates and immigration attorneys representing Haitians. 

Additionally, community leaders and lawyers from other cities with large Haitian immigrant populations such as Boston, Chicago and Miami have not seen the same tactic. One advocate has seen an increased presence of federal immigration agents in Brooklyn, New York, but so far no check-ins. The advocates and lawyers from Springfield said they do not know the exact number of Haitians under electronic monitoring. 

“It’s really just theater,” said Lynn Tramonte, the executive director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, an advocacy group. “They’re putting ankle monitors on people to make it look like they’re doing something, but it’s devastating for the people who are getting these placed on their ankle. They’re a constant reminder that you’re not free.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to a detailed list of questions from States Newsroom regarding the use of ankle monitors. 

The use of ankle monitors for immigrants who have no criminal background and previously held legal status is a departure from standard practice. Typically an ankle monitor is used for immigrants with a criminal record, an order for deportation, or a missed appearance in immigration court. 

Springfield is home to 15,000 Haitian immigrants. The community became a focus of President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to conduct mass deportations in September 2024 when he falsely accused them of eating house pets and vowed to terminate their legal protections in order to deport them. 

The Supreme Court in June cleared the way for the Trump administration to end TPS for up to 350,000 Haitians. The case is now back at a lower court in the District of Columbia, which is litigating whether the government’s decision to end protections for Haitians was based on racial animus. 

Deportation or monitoring

Following the ruling, the DHS sent letters to Haitians in Springfield as early as July 22, said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance. States Newsroom has reviewed a copy of the letter that dozens of Haitians in Springfield received directing them to bring all their immigration documents to an appointment at an ICE office.

Then, on July 31, about 50 Haitians had check-in appointments at the Cincinnati ICE field office. At the appointments, they were pressured to accept $2,600 to self-deport or alternatively to wear an ankle monitor. 

All of them rejected the money, Jozef said. 

“Being deported to Haiti right now is a death sentence,” she said. 

Two days later, on Aug. 2, a dozen Haitians with TPS were summoned to check-ins and left with ankle monitors, said Katie Kersh, the managing attorney for Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, a nonprofit that provides legal representation to immigrants in Ohio.

“The people getting the ankle monitors are the people who are complying … and they’re getting this thing that we connote with criminality, which is an ankle monitor, when they’ve literally gotten that because they followed the orders of the call-in letter,” Kersh said.

The practice could ramp up following Wednesday’s order from a federal judge that lifted a stay in place since February that prevented the Trump administration from ending temporary protections for as many as 350,000 Haitians. 

On the same day the stay was lifted, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in an interview with NewsNation that the department was “going after (Haitians) right now.”

“We are giving them an opportunity to either leave on their own and we’ll help you, or we’ll arrest you and send you back,” he said. “Either way, you don’t have status inside this country anymore.”

Chaotic rollout

Immigration attorneys and advocates for Haitians in Ohio described to States Newsroom a disorganized scene at the ICE check-in appointments on July 31 and Aug. 2.

Kersh said she witnessed ICE officers taking out brand-new ankle monitors that weren’t charged. 

Instructions were only provided in English and Spanish, when the first language for many Haitians is usually Creole. A translator was nowhere to be found, she added, so she brought one along.

ICE personnel appeared unable to be flexible when issues arose. A Haitian woman who worked a night shift wouldn’t have time to charge the ankle monitor given to her Aug. 2, Kersh said.

An ICE officer told the woman “to just charge it while you’re sleeping,” and the woman, whom Kersh represented, again told the officer that she worked nights, Kersh said. 

Kersh said she tried to find other options for electronic monitoring for her clients, such as a daily facial recognition check-in or a wrist monitor, but said the immigration officials would not deviate.

She said an ICE officer told her that “we are being told from headquarters that we have to ankle monitor them specifically.” 

Permission to travel to court

Another issue is the ankle monitor’s 75-mile radius, Kersh said. 

Ohio’s only immigration court is located in Cleveland, 188 miles from Springfield. So a Haitian with an ankle monitor would first have to get permission from an ICE officer to travel to their court hearing. 

“It just sort of feels like the wheels are off the bus,” she said.

Getting to the appointments was its own hurdle. 

When Haitians received a letter directing them to attend ICE check-ins, many of them had to scramble to find a way to attend because of recently expired driver’s licenses. Ohio legislators passed a law that ties a valid driver’s license to immigration status.

Jozef said the Haitians fitted with ankle monitors last week were told by ICE officers that they would need to return several weeks later and were given no other information on what would happen at future check-ins.

“We are not sure what will happen to the people, but as of right now, the tactic that is being used is to have those call-ins to be able to control the movement of the people, and to be able to target them more easily,” Jozef said.

Longtime Trump goal

Revoking legal status for Haitians to open them up for removal has been a goal of Trump’s since his first administration, but he has ramped up the effort in his second term that began after he made mass deportations a central campaign theme. 

“They really, really, really, really want to target these people,” said Geoffrey Pipoly, the attorney who represented the Haitian TPS holders before the Supreme Court. 

During the first Trump administration, the government tried to end TPS for Haiti with an 18-month wind-down period, but courts blocked the termination. 

“We went from the first Trump administration giving these folks 18 months to get their affairs in order to now, their position is: We’re not even going to give you 32 days from the final judgment of the Supreme Court … as soon as the earliest possible time that we are legally allowed to start deporting people, that’s what we’re going to start doing,” Pipoly said.

After the Supreme Court’s decision in June, lower courts typically have a 32-day deadline to implement the high court’s ruling, meaning that the estimated date for the 6-3 decision regarding Haitians would go into effect July 27. But Haitians were already receiving letters from ICE dated July 22 to report for a check-in. 

16 years of protections

Congress created TPS in the 1990s as a way for nationals who hail from countries deemed too dangerous to return to due to violence, natural disasters or other destabilizing factors, to remain safely in the U.S. The status allows them to remain and work in the United States anywhere from six to 18 months. 

In order to qualify for the program, immigrants must go through a background check and pay application fees each renewal cycle. 

TPS does not provide a pathway to citizenship, but recipients can apply for another immigration status, such as asylum. 

Of the roughly 350,000 Haitians with TPS, about 200,000 of them are in the workforce, according to the immigration advocacy group FWD.us. Of that group, they work in industries like healthcare, retail, agriculture and manufacturing. 

Haiti was first granted TPS in 2010 after a devastating earthquake. In 2021, President Joe Biden extended the protections after the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse. 

The State Department currently has a “Do Not Travel” advisory for Haiti “due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care.”

WASHINGTON — A federal judge lifted a stay Wednesday on the termination of temporary protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians in order to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that cleared the way for the Trump administration to remove their legal status and open them up for deportations. 

The order from U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes means that between 330,000 to 350,000 Haitians living in the United States have lost their Temporary Protected Status, even while legal arguments on a racial discrimination claim continue. 

Reyes’ order, in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, brought the case into compliance with a 6-3 Supreme Court decision that Haitians and Syrians were not entitled to postponements of their status while litigation continues.

The June Supreme Court ruling also said courts could not review the Homeland Security secretary’s decision to end TPS.

As part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, the administration has moved to revoke the legal status of millions of immigrants, including those with TPS, which is given to nationals who hail from countries deemed too dangerous to return to. 

The State Department has a “do not travel” advisory for Haiti due to gang violence and kidnappings. 

Work authorization for Haitians expired last week, along with some driver’s licenses for immigrants residing in Ohio and Florida, two states that have passed laws that tie eligibility for a driver’s license to immigration status.

Racial animus

The remaining legal argument is whether the Trump administration’s decision to end TPS for Haiti was based on racial animus, which would violate the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause. 

On the campaign trail, then-presidential candidate Trump singled out Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio, claiming that their legal protections were illegitimate and falsely accusing them of eating house pets. 

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority decision in June, said that the Haitians’ arguments that their equal protection claim that their protections were terminated on a racial animus were unlikely to prevail in court.

Discovery issues 

The attorney who represented the Haitian TPS holders before the Supreme Court, Geoffrey Pipoly, told States Newsroom this week that he was not expecting Reyes to issue a new stay to halt the ending of protections. 

Pipoly and his team had not yet obtained enough evidence through discovery, a process that can take months, to try and secure another stay, he said. 

Pipoly said the documents produced by the Department of Justice so far were limited and heavily redacted.

“They’re just taking this exceptionally robust view of privilege in a way that I’ve never seen a government defendant exert privileges before,” he said. “What’s behind those redactions is going to influence the scope of our ongoing equal protection claim. But we’re going to have to litigate what’s behind those redactions.”

Reyes in her Wednesday order also denied the administration’s request to issue a stay on the discovery process and ordered both parties to submit a briefing schedule.

WASHINGTON — Hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants could lose their legal status as early as Tuesday, subjecting them to deportation after the U.S. Supreme Court last month allowed the Trump administration to proceed with terminating their humanitarian protections. 

The incoming loss of Temporary Protected Status for between 330,000 and 350,000 immigrants comes amid the Trump administration’s deportation campaign and continued attacks on TPS recipients who hail from countries deemed too unsafe for return. The State Department highly advises against any visit to Haiti due to kidnappings and violence by gangs. 

The Department of Homeland Security has already urged those who are set to lose their TPS to self-deport. 

“Temporary protected status is exactly that — TEMPORARY,” DHS said in a Monday social media post. “For those with terminated TPS: it’s closing time. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

Several media reports have indicated that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning for aggressive enforcement of Haitian immigrants who lose their legal status, starting with the large population in Springfield, Ohio. 

The state’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, told CBS News on Monday he was not aware of those plans from DHS, and called any enforcement actions against Haitians a “mistake.”

Lower court stay

The exact timing of the loss of status is complicated by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., who has yet to apply the Supreme Court ruling in the case and lift an earlier stay that bars the administration from ending TPS for Haitians. A decision, potentially issuing another stay while the court hears other arguments, is expected this week. 

The U.S. Department of Justice has proposed a briefing schedule to continue arguments in the District of Columbia trial court, with the last brief due Nov. 6. Attorneys for Haitians with TPS plan to file a brief by Friday laying out their legal arguments in the wake of the high court’s decision.

Federal judges have paused TPS terminations for nationals from Burma, Ethiopia and South Sudan. Before the second Trump administration began last year, there were roughly 1.3 million immigrants on TPS hailing from 17 countries. 

Businesses, families in flux

Immigration advocates and business leaders have criticized the administration’s policy to revoke TPS.

“Most adult TPS holders are active participants in the labor force, working in industries that already face persistent worker shortages,” Rebecca Shi, CEO of American Business Immigration Coalition Action, said in a statement. “Removing these workers doesn’t just upend lives, it weakens industries that are already struggling to meet demand.”

The Haitian Bridge Alliance, which advocates for Haitian TPS holders, said in a statement that the loss of deportation protections will lead to family separation, as many recipients have U.S. citizen children.

“What we could witness will be one of the largest family separation events in modern day history,” the Haitian Bridge Alliance said.

Other avenues closing

Some TPS recipients can apply for another immigration status, such as asylum, though not all can apply or qualify. 

For example, noncitizens with TPS due to a natural disaster are unlikely to meet the criteria for asylum, which includes fear of persecution “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion,” according to federal law. 

Additionally, the Trump administration issued a rule Tuesday that will allow for asylum officers to immediately send asylum seekers to appear before immigration judges without conducting an interview or including key evidence of the applicant’s credibility, leading to a quick denial and deportation. 

The new rule, coupled with the loss of TPS, means that recipients are unlikely to have a strong chance of winning asylum claims. 

High court ruling

Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that courts were barred from reviewing if the decision to end TPS designation made by then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem followed the proper procedures.

Even though the case was brought by TPS recipients from Haiti and Syria, the decision could also impact other TPS-related challenges to the Trump administration’s efforts to end the designation.

Following the high court’s ruling, attorneys representing TPS recipients in courts across the country are amending their complaints. 

They argue that the termination of TPS status, including work authorization, is a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s 5th Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which says the government cannot deprive a person of their “life, liberty or property” without following certain procedures. 

Lawyers have also argued that the TPS terminations were based on racial animus rather than because country conditions improved. 

They cite President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign statements that falsely accused Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, of eating house pets.