A Return to Springfield, Ohio in a Time of Ethnic Cleansing
Viles Dorsainvil speaking to WDTN reporter Sartaj Singh photo by Dan Grossman
I returned to Springfield, Ohio on Monday, February 21, the day after the Trump administration canceled the extension of temporary protected status (TPS) for approximately 520,000 Haitian migrants in the US. The decision was a reversal of the Biden administration’s extension of TPS through February 2026.
TPS is a federal program that allows migrants from countries in turmoil to live and work in the US legally.
This reversal has grave implications for thousands of Haitians living in Springfield. Those currently on TPS could be subject to arrest and deportation come August 3, when they lose their protected status.
During my first visit to this rustbelt city of 60,000 over Columbus Day weekend, I’d talked to people I met at two Haitian restaurants and the Haitian Community Help and Support Center.
At that time, the controversy over the false rumor that Haitians were eating dogs and cats in Springfield—which both JD Vance and Donald Trump promoted over the summer—was still fresh and, in the months leading up to the presidential election, Springfield was still very much on Trump’s radar.
“We’ll have the largest deportation in the history of our country and we’re going to start with Springfield,” he said during a campaign event at his golf resort in Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, California on September 13.
He’ll have his work cut out for him. According to The New York Times, estimates of the Haitian population in Springfield range from from 12,000 to 20,000. But it may be less difficult to stage a mass deportation in Springfield than, say, in Boston and in Chicago, which are both sanctuary cities and limit their cooperation with the federal government in enforcing immigration law. In any case, all indications are that the Trump administration is serious about carrying out what the president himself has called a policy of “remigration” of the 12 million or so undocumented persons living in the US. Not much has been written about Trump’s use of this term. But the left-leaning outlets HuffPost, Mother Jones and The New Republic have all described “reimigration” as a form of ethnic cleansing, according to Media Matters for America.
My first stop in Springfield, after driving two hours straight from Indianapolis, was Keket Bongou Caribbean Restaurant.
The owner/operator Ketlie Moise, was one of the Haitians I’d talked to previously. On my first visit, she told me how her mother was killed and her restaurant burnt down in Haiti, in acts of gang violence. She’d fled to the States with her daughter, her sister, her niece, and her brother, all currently on TPS status.
Their prospects for remaining in the US are not good. At the same time, it’s dangerous for them to return to Haiti. Much of the country, including 85 percent of the capital Port au Prince, is under the control of gangs.
Moise was talking with Alese Underwood, a reporter for Spectrum One News out of Dayton, when I walked into the restaurant. There were some other Haitians in the restaurant waiting for their orders, or eating, when I walked in. I ordered barbeque chicken and plantains, an amalgam of culinary influences, at the counter. I sat down, hoping to get a chance to talk to her at the end of the lunch rush.
In the photograph on the wall, which showed Moise celebrating her birthday, a joyful smile on her face. When she finally got a chance to sit down with me, however, she looked tired and anxious.
“How’s business?” I asked.
“Slow” she said. “A woman I just talked to today, she just left. She’s going … somewhere.”
There wasn’t much to talk about that we hadn’t discussed on my previous trip and we sat there for a moment in awkward silence.
“We wait.” Moise may as well have been speaking for the entire Haitian community of Springfield. “We wait and see.”
She had to get back to work.
Before doing so, however, she started talking to a man in a booth who was eating a plate of stewed legumes and white rice.
After he finished his meal, we had a conversation in French. He told me he worked as a police officer in Haiti. His wife and children lived in Hinche, a town in the center of Haiti, and he sent them remittances.He worked in the Amazon warehouse, he said. He had been in the States since 2021. He was 46 years old. He had been forced to leave his hometown because of the gangs but now he was set on going back despite this because things had just become too difficult in Springfield. He didn’t want me to use his name, even his first name.
I had the opportunity to talk to another man as well, another man who also didn’t want to share his name, who wore a big wooden cross. He was a Mormon, one of many Haitians who turned to local houses of worship for guidance and solace. When he told me of his faith affiliation, at first it didn’t compute because I’d never heard “Mormon” pronounced in a French/Haitian Creole accent before. Then he mentioned Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saints who claimed to have discovered the foundational text of his faith on gold tablets, and I finally got the idea.
He asked how I knew how to speak in French, which is used as a language of instruction in Haiti’s schools.(Haitian Creole is the main language of communication.) I told him I had learned French as a Peace Corps volunteer along with Hausa and he told me to say something in Hausa. I said, “Sannu, sannu ba ta hanna zuwa” which means, more or less, “Slowly the turtle wins the race.” He told me he followed the news coming out of Niger, West Africa, where I served as a volunteer. He enlightened me as to the Nigerien president’s name. The typical American knows nothing about Niger, but it sort of made sense to me that a Haitian might follow African news so closely. After all, most Haitians are the descendents of African slaves.
I knew some of the history: the Haitian Revolution preceded the liberation struggles in Africa by more than a century. After independence in 1804, the country—which Trump has described as a “shithole” along with its African counterparts—became the first in the Western Hemisphere to ban slavery.
As I left KEKET Bongou, I took a panorama shot both inside and outside the restaurant with the camera on my Galaxy S-9 cell phone. Lately I’ve been stacking such shots together, like visual stacks of pancakes, to give a photographic impression of a particular place.
I was finding my work as a writer to be more challenging. On my first trip to Springfield, locals— both long-term residents and Haitians—seemed reluctant to talk. This time around, the mayor declined my interview request. I had, however, received plenty of comments on my story, “Hope and Dread in Springfield, Ohio,” based on my first trip, published on my own blog and on Newsbreakapp.com.
Someone named brack commented, “they are illegal invaders!! tax sucking scum!! they are criminals!!! all need to get the hell out !!!!!
From Coulter Dave, I got the following, “I like that a person that doesn’t live here writes a story and thinks she know [sic] what’s going on here I noticed that she [sic] skirted around the fact that means the most. They are not legal US citizens if they were then we would not be talking about this at all. If they are not here legally they must go and quit sucking all our resources dry to people that are legal US citizens.”
That was the tenor of many of the responses, some repeating the debunked claim that Haitians were eating dogs and cats.
But there were also more measured replies. A woman named Enembe Hayes wrote “As you can see, many people in the town aren't very educated or can't think for themselves, and believe the lies spread by the media and Trump administration. Some of it was true, but they're not eating pets or ducks/geese. There are many problems, though.”
She pointed to increased competition for scarce jobs in Springfield because of the influx of migrants. She pointed to increased scarcity of healthcare resulting from Haitian settlement in the city. Clearly the increase in the community’s population, by 25 percent over the past three years, has caused growing pains.
(Ohio governor Mike DeWine, in a Sept. 11 press release, announced 2.5 million dollars in state support for Springfield in healthcare and public safety programs, acknowledging the strain that the number of Haitian migrants was placing on the healthcare system. He has also spoken positively about Haitians in terms of taking jobs that were previously unfilled.)
Hayes also mentioned the issue of erratic driving by Haitians. She cited a fatal accident involving an unlicensed driver named Hermanio Joseph. This is well documented. On Aug. 23 2023, this Haitian migrant caused a Springfield school bus to overturn with 52 students on board. One of those students, Aiden Clark, was killed in the accident and 20 other students were injured.
“They drive very erratically, without licenses, or they drive very slowly, going only 35 mph on the highway when the speed limit is 60-75 mph,” she wrote. “They don't stop at 4 way stops or just don't wait their turn or don't understand driving laws.”
I got in my car and drove to the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, which had been founded in the wake of this bus accident. It was located in a former event center, and assisted Haitians with everything from obtaining driving lessons and licenses to filing applications for work, housing, and change of legal status.
I took a series of panoramic photos of the nondescript, one story building. A woman who was not Haitian, pulled up to me in a truck. “Can I help you?” she asked.
I explained that I was wanting to get in touch with Viles Dorsainvil, the executive director of the Support Center, who I had interviewed previously. I told her I had a blog, Indy Correspondent, but that I was also a freelance writer, that I had written about Springfield before, and that I was concerned about the situation in Springfield.
That’s when the tense expression on her face melted. “God bless you,” she said. “I teach English here. I just needed to ask because you never know who’s going to come around.”
She drove off.
A hatchback from WDTN Channel 2 News out of Dayton, was in the parking lot. I knocked on the door and multimedia reporter Sartaj Singh opened the door. He allowed me into the reception area, where there was a camera set up on a tripod, when I told him I was wanting to talk to Dorsainvil.
Singh told me Dorsainvil had agreed to speak on camera at 3 p.m.
Ketlie Moise in Keket Bongou Caribbean Restaurant
From the adjacent office, where there was a flurry of activity, Dorsainvil appeared promptly.
He recognized me, as we had met during my previous trip to Springfield and agreed that I could listen in as Signh asked him questions. The first question he asked was the reaction of the Haitian community to Trump revoking TPS for roughly 520,000 Haitian migrants.
Dorsainvil, in front of the camera operated solely by Singh, described his own reaction as “heartbreaking.”
“I never believed that the Trump administration would have taken such a bad decision for the Haitian here looking for safety,” he said.
He went on to acknowledge the difficult conversations he and his colleagues were having with Haitians over the past 24 hours, telling them that their status would run out by August 3, and that they could be subject to arrest and deportation, after that date, by Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE).
He maintained a calm demeanor. “I want to let them know that we are resilient,” he said. “We have been through a lot from home, and this is why we are here, just because our country is not doing well. I will tell them to stay put and try to develop a personal and family plan, because we are facing an unusual time and still, they have to know their rights.”
Dorsainvil then cited the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution, which establishes the right to remain silent, even for those who are not citizens: “They have right to not reveal the status to anyone or their origin or anything, and we'll continue to distribute our resources that will tell them about their rights, and if they have any needs, they are open to call us, and we'll be more than happy just to inform them about what they should do.”
The reporter asked Dorsainvil for his reaction to Republican Mayor Rob Rue’s statement on the revocation of TPS status, reading it off to him: “We fully support the immigrants in our community who are here legally,” he read. “At the same time, we remain steadfast in our commitment to upholding federal law, as we always have, and will continue to comply with any guidance from the Federal Administration.”
In response he said,” I think that the city has been supporting Haitians here, but at the same time as they say, they have to abide by the law.”
Dorsainvil, who was born in Haiti, used to be a pastor in Jamaica He went to seminary there and worked with the Haitian Association for the United Nations. When he came to Springfield in 2020, he started helping people get involved in church activities or community activities and eventually became the director of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, which he co-founded.
I had a moment to chat with Dorsainvil after the interview was over. I asked him if he had TPS status, a question I failed to ask on my previous visit.He declined to answer this question because he didn’t want to make the story of Haitians in Springfield about him. “I want to be as vulnerable as I can to the Haitians because I am serving them… We want to be as close as we can to the population.”
I thanked Dorsainvil and wished him luck, and then headed out the door. What the Haitian community here needed, however, wasn’t luck at all, but the kind of divine guidance Joseph Smith claimed to have received by way of his discovery of gold tablets. In short, they need a miracle.
Postscript: On Feb. 24 Mayor Rob Rue told Newsweek the following: "I encourage this administration to reform federal immigration policies in a way that protects our borders, ensures fairness, and enriches our nation—while also giving immigrants seeking to become productive citizens a clear path forward instead of facing immediate deportation."
Panoramic photos of Springfield Ohio by Dan Grossman from top to bottom: Springfield Museum of Art, Keket Bongou Caribbean Restaurant exterior and interior, Rose Goute Restaurant exterior and interior, Haitian Community Help and Support Center, Downtown Springfield with a view of City Hall, Springfield Museum of Art exterior and interior.
