Overview:
Springfield advocate Vilès Dorsainvil says Haitian immigrants are being ordered to report to a federal immigration facility to receive ankle monitors, raising new fears within the Ohio community.
SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Haitian immigrants in Springfield are facing what a prominent advocate describes as a “new humiliation” for the targeted community: electronic ankle monitors placed on them “like they’re criminals.”
“I was crying,” Vilès Dorsainvil, executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, told The Haitian Times Sunday. “This is a new humiliation.
“That is something you do with criminals,” he added. “It’s like bringing back slavery days.”
In response to questions from The Haitian Times about the practice, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said the agency conducts law enforcement activities across the country “to keep Americans safe” and does not discuss ongoing or future operations.
“Temporary Protected Status is exactly that—temporary,” the unnamed spokesperson said. “What we would say now is it’s closing time which means you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. The good news is it’s not too late to get a $2,600 check and a free flight home.”
Dorsainvil said members of his organization, a group of lawyers and other immigrant advocates accompanied 10 Haitians Sunday to an immigration facility in Blue Ash, Ohio, after they received letters directing them to appear. He said the letters began arriving by mail after July 27, the day a US District Judge lifted the order that had stayed Haitian TPS program revocation.
The “call-in letter,” as one sample he shared is titled, seemed to be going to Haitians with pending asylum cases who first arrived through the southern border under the Biden-era humanitarian parole program.
Many who received the letter contacted the Haitian Support Center, Dorsainvil said, and its volunteers have been helping to provide transportation and Haitian Creole interpretation. Attorneys with ABLE, a legal services nonprofit organization that collaborates with the Haitian Support Center, questioned the requirement but were told agents had no discretion.
At the appearances Sunday, ABLE’s attorneys documented what occurred and asked the federal agents about the GPS ankle monitors.
“They said they had to put it on because it was an order coming from the top,” Dorsainvil said, moments after attending a rally outside the facility to support the Haitians.
He described the experience as “humiliating” for the people he accompanied. Among those reporting to the facility was a woman with diabetes who worried the device could aggravate the existing medical condition if she were to become injured.
Like the woman, those summoned had entered the United States legally through the humanitarian parole program or filed for asylum even as they obtained Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which allows recipients to live and work legally.
“At the end of the day, it was the US government who allowed them to come here,” Dorsainvil points out. “If the US government does not want them anymore, I think they have the right to appear before a judge, and the judge could decide what they want to do with them.”
Ankle monitors for non-citizens not new
Since the Supreme Court ruled in June that the administration can terminate TPS, Homeland Security has announced several new policies to carry out deportations. Among them are fast-tracking asylum seekers with pending claims into deportation proceedings.
On its site, the Department of Homeland Security, under which immigration agencies like ICE and Border Patrol fall, however, a video explains that ankle monitors may be required for non-citizens likely to be deported because most noncitizens arriving through the border are not eligible to remain in the country.
“In some cases, noncitizens may be temporarily released as they await the results of their immigration court proceedings, only if they have passed screening and vetting,” according to the video transcript. “They are required to check in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a regular basis, and may be given ankle monitors or similar electronic devices.”
As the summoned immigrants went through the process Sunday, hundreds gathered outside the facility to protest the ankle monitors. The rally in support of former Haitian TPS holders outside the ICE facility this weekend mirrors actions decrying the administration’s deportation goals.
Springfield has been the center of the immigration debate since Trump repeated baseless claims about Haitians in that city during the 2024 presidential campaign. Since similar monitoring requirements do not seem to be in place in other cities with large Haitian communities, Dorsainvil said, Springfield’s Haitians may be being singled out.