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.”

OKLAHOMA CITY — U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin this weekend implored states and cities to cooperate with federal immigration officials, which he said would lead to safer and lower-profile arrests and deportations.

Speaking to a group of Democratic and Republican governors gathered for the National Governors Association summer meeting, Mullin called on local governments to help focus on removing the “worst of the worst” offenders, particularly targeting people without legal citizenship status who have criminal court convictions.

The Republican, who previously represented Oklahoma in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House, took the stage with Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, the outgoing chair of the national association. Mullin took over the agency after President Donald Trump fired former Secretary Krsti Noem, who defended the high-profile killings of American citizens by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. 

In his remarks on Saturday, Mullin asked states to cooperate with immigration detainers, in which the feds ask local governments to hold people in the country without legal authorization after they have served their time in prison or jail. 

“That shouldn’t be controversial,” he said. “We’re not doing job-site raids. We’re not going to Home Depot and raiding the parking lot. These are individuals that have already been convicted of a crime.”

The secretary said the alternative for so-called sanctuary cities or states that don’t cooperate with ICE is a much more dangerous prospect: ICE agents pursuing arrests of people after they are released.

“We’re going to arrest them, and then we’re going to arrest them in a public space, which could cause more problems and put our officers at risk, the public at risk, and the person we’re serving the detainer at risk.”  

Mullin highlighted the department’s recent success during the World Cup in cooperating with law enforcement, which he said not only ensured the safety of locals and visitors, but provided meaningful human trafficking prevention and the confiscation of counterfeit goods.

“We can’t do it without you guys,” he said. “I’m saying we can work together.”

He focused on cooperation in Oklahoma, where 76 of the state’s 77 counties are working with the federal government to remove immigrants before they are released from jails and prisons. 

“It’s not on the news,” he said. “You don’t see us around because the state is doing most of the work.”

Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, who took over leadership of the bipartisan governors group this week from Stitt, thanked the secretary for opening up lines of communication with states since taking over.

“There is an absolute difference in what we have seen from the start of the administration to now,” he said.

Moore questioned Mullin about the status of federal security grants, which can aid state anti-terrorism work, provide federal training and boost cybersecurity efforts. 

Mullin said the first thing the agency looked at was whether the local government was cooperating with federal law enforcement. 

“The whole point of the grants is so we can have partnerships,” he said. “…This has nothing to do with picking winners and losers or saying I choose Oklahoma over California — this has to do with it is designed by nature to build a partnership.”

At least 15 states, including Maryland, are identified as sanctuary states by the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower levels of immigration. 

Mullin’s comments over the weekend sparked backlash from some Republicans, including prominent Trump ally Steve Bannon. Some of those pundits said Mullin was too lax on deportations after he acknowledged the legal steps migrants could take to gain legal status.

Mullin said naturalization ceremonies occur constantly with nearly 900,000 people becoming U.S. citizens in the past year.

But he said federal officials will have no tolerance for migrants with criminal convictions or those who have not taken the legal steps to remain in the country.

Under Mullin’s watch, ICE has made a record number of immigration arrests.

Immigration arrests reached 1,593 per day in early July in a new push to detain and deport immigrants. In June, there were more than 43,000 arrests, the highest recorded by the Trump administration, according to statistics from ICE.

“There’s a legal system to go through,” he said. “But if you choose not to even begin or not to change your status, if you’ve been here 25 years, I can’t help you.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. 

WASHINGTON — A supermajority of the U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus has asked Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to deploy body cameras to all federal immigration officers, following deadly shootings of immigrants in Texas and Maine.

In a July 19 letter addressed to Mullin, 38 Senate Democrats and Maine’s Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, requested information about the shootings this month in Houston of 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and in Biddeford, Maine, of 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero. 

Neither man was the initial enforcement target when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stopped their vehicles, the Department of Homeland Security has said.

“The unnecessary loss of life in these incidents demands immediate, thorough, independent, and transparent investigations (including the full involvement of local and state law enforcement personnel), along with a comprehensive examination of enforcement protocols, training, and operational approaches necessary to prevent such tragedies,” the senators wrote.

The lawmakers pressed Mullin about providing body cameras to immigration officers, pointing out the Congress has allocated $175 billion to the department since last year. From that funding, DHS planned to hire up to 10,000 ICE officers.

“While DHS has previously acknowledged that body-worn cameras promote public trust and increase officer and public safety, accountability, and transparency, the Department has clearly not prioritized acquiring cameras,” the senators wrote.

None of the ICE officers involved in the shootings were wearing body cameras. 

“Contrary to recent statements made by the Department and the White House, DHS has had more than sufficient time and funding to procure and deploy a body-worn camera for every officer before the end of 2025,” they wrote.

Enough funding

Congressional Republicans last year used a special legislative maneuver to allocate roughly $175 billion to DHS for immigration enforcement, detainment and deportations, without needing Democratic support. 

They used the same move following the shutdown this year to fund $75 billion for ICE and Border Patrol through September of 2029. 

Republicans used the maneuver that allows party-line votes after Democrats refused to provide more funding for DHS unless restraints were placed on ICE and Border Patrol officers following the killings of two U.S. citizens — Alex Pretti and Renee Good — by federal immigration agents in Minnesota in January. 

Among Democrats’ demands at the time was that immigration officers wear body cameras. Top Trump officials, including then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, said body cameras would be provided to immigration agents.

“The recent tragedies confirm that neither of these commitments were honored,” senators wrote in the letter.

Traffic stops unpaused

White House border czar Tom Homan said over the weekend that ICE officers will wear “at least one body camera” during traffic stops.

Following the two killings this month, DHS instructed immigration officers to pause vehicle stops, but President Donald Trump quickly instructed the department to continue the policy.  

During the second Trump administration, federal immigration officers have shot 22 people and killed six, including three U.S. citizens. Most of the shootings stemmed from traffic stops.

In the letter, senators also sought information about DHS’s plan to have an independent investigation into the killings, the vetting process for new immigration officers, the department’s procedures for vehicle stops and any additional oversight and reporting requirements DHS is implementing.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened on Friday to prosecute election officials in states that don’t “participate in securing the elections” ahead of the November midterms. 

Election officials who do not comply with administration directives to enhance security of voting machines and to share voter data with the federal government through the powerful Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements computer program would be subject to fines and even prison time, he said.

“If the states that choose not to participate with the SAVE program and they choose not to participate in securing the elections, we will make sure that we make those states a priority to look at who voted in their states, and hold the election officials accountable,” Mullin said during a press conference. 

The Trump administration will make it mandatory for states to undergo security enhancements of their voter machines and withhold grants or reimbursements to any states that do not, he said.

The mandate was necessary, he said, because foreign adversaries produce parts that are vital pieces in U.S. voting machines, and can “change voter registration and your vote.”

“The machines have to be secured and your voter registration list needs to be scrubbed,” he said, summarizing the department’s message to state officials. “Our machines are vulnerable. There are steps that can be made right now that can secure those.”

Earlier Friday, Mullin sent a letter to the secretaries of state of four states the department reviewed — Nevada, California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania — to warn them of the “tens of thousands of non-citizens who are illegally on the states’ voter rolls.”

Leaders from those states immediately pushed back against Mullin and President Donald Trump’s claims. 

It is unclear what authority Mullin would use to investigate state election administration. The U.S. Constitution empowers states to run elections.

But it is clear the Trump administration considers election security a top priority in the leadup to the midterms.

Mullin’s remarks followed President Donald Trump’s address to the nation Thursday evening in which he declared that the U.S. election systems are vulnerable to foreign cyberattacks and nations such as China and Iran have sought to influence the outcome of past elections, including in 2018 and 2020. 

Noncitizen voting

Trump has long focused on voting by noncitizens, which is rare. 

Mullin on Friday said the Homeland Security Department reviewed voter rolls in a handful of states and discovered more than 250,000 noncitizens who were registered to vote. 

The federal government will make it a priority to “look at who voted in their states” and hold their election officials accountable, Mullin said. 

The federal government will go through the records “one by one,” he said at the press conference, and pursue maximum charges for anyone found to have voted illegally, which includes up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines. 

SAVE in court

The SAVE program allows local jurisdictions to determine someone’s immigration status for purposes such as applying for government jobs, benefits and driver’s licenses. 

The administration wants states to use the powerful computer system to check the citizenship of people on voter rolls and is battling in court to restore that use of the program after a federal court ruled in June the expansion was unlawful.

Mullin blamed the program’s pause on “activist judges” who don’t want secure elections. 

The SAVE program is distinct from, but shares its acronym with, the SAVE America Act, a bill that proposes to restrict voter access by adding requirements to register and cast ballots, including photo IDs. The bill is stalled in the U.S. Senate and does not include funding for election security infrastructure. 

Democratic officials cry foul

In Mullin’s letter to Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, which was shared with States Newsroom, Mullin shared “concerning results” of a preliminary review of Nevada’s voter registration data showing there were as many as 15,903 noncitizens registered to vote. 

“I hope that you share in the commitment to ensure that only U.S. citizens participate in our federal elections,” Mullin wrote. “Allowing just one non-citizen to vote cancels the vote of one U.S. citizen.” 

Mullin said his team would help support the state to “take steps to protect Nevada voters and ensure that ineligible voters will not impact upcoming federal elections.”

Aguilar, a Democrat, told States Newsroom in a statement Friday that the department’s estimate is “wildly speculative at best.” The department “hasn’t shared anything that backs it up,” he added.

Aguilar said there are multiple safeguards in place to prevent noncitizens or any other ineligible voters from casting a ballot, and that Nevada runs “some of the safest, most secure and accessible elections in the country.”

“The Administration lacks a fundamental understanding of how elections work,” Aguilar wrote. “They just want to cause chaos and doubt ahead of the midterms.” 

In a statement Friday afternoon, Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, a Republican, said all evidence shows that noncitizen voting is “extremely rare across the country, including in Pennsylvania.” 

Every resident must take multiple steps to verify their identity before they cast a ballot or register to vote, he said. 

“While the Department has made clear that we cannot share Pennsylvanians’ private, personal information, we will review any information provided by DHS so that we can evaluate the validity of these claims,” Schmidt said. 

California under fire

California has repeatedly come under fire from Trump regarding its elections. In his speech Thursday evening, he cast doubt on the integrity of the state’s recent Los Angeles mayoral and gubernatorial races. 

Secretary of State Shirley Weber described the claims as fallacious and unsubstantiated. 

“Non-citizen voting remains exceedingly rare,” she said. “In California, election officials work every day to maintain accurate voter rolls and ensure that only eligible voters are registered.”

She said her team will carefully review Mullin’s letter to assess the methodology for its claims, and “welcome legitimate best practices that comply with state and federal law while protecting Californians’ personal information.” 

“However, the information provided during the President’s remarks and on the White House website, do not inspire any level of confidence in the methodology used or the conclusions reached,” she added. “If the President is truly committed to election integrity, he must stop undermining confidence in our democracy, making it harder for eligible Americans to vote, and attempting to seize authority that the Constitution clearly reserves for the states.”