Haitians in Springfield meet legal status fears with unity

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — You can tell the last two years have drained Vilès Dorsainvil. The executive director of the Haitian Community Support Center in Springfield, Ohio, has fielded everything from false claims accusing his community of eating pets; Haitian residents facing unemployment then housing and food insecurity; interview upon interview as the government and courts sparred over their legal status. And through it all, he projected a calm and collected image.

It became clear Thursday morning that the Supreme Court’s ruling on temporary protected status, granted to immigrants from countries facing natural disaster, political violence and other extraordinary circumstances, for Haitians and Syrians was the final act that broke him.

“Today was the saddest day since I’ve been here because, as a foreigner in this land, I expected what I knew about the U.S.,” he said during a virtual press conference that morning. “I used to know a USA, where human dignity was valued — justice was valued — but it’s no longer this.”

In one of the last decision days of the season, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the Department of Homeland Security in Mullin v. Doe, allowing the cancellation of TPS for Haitian and Syrian recipients to take effect. In mere moments, hundreds of thousands of immigrants across the country became undocumented, and fears of what would happen to them and their mixed-citizenship families mounted.

Dorsainvil appeared to be in shock while sitting solemnly beside Pastor Carl Ruby, a leader of local advocacy coalition Springfield G92, in the sanctuary of Central Christian Church. He hung his head from slumped shoulders, his arms crossed over his stomach and his stare far away.

“Coming from a country where it is not safe, and there will be some family separation, I expected the Supreme Court to take those into consideration and do a better ruling, but unfortunately, this is not the case,” Dorsainvil said.

In Springfield, the small, post-industrial city 40 miles west of the state capital that President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance cast into the spotlight in 2024, chaos set in quickly among its roughly 15,000 TPS holders. But as the sun began to set on an impromptu vigil in the courtyard of Springfield City Hall, Haitian Springfielders and their neighbors made clear they weren’t willing to give up so easily.

“There’s a strong commitment in Springfield for the faith community to stand with Haitians who are at risk of deportation,” Ruby said during the morning news conference, explaining that the coalition’s name comes from the 92 times the Hebrew word “ger,” meaning foreigner, is mentioned in the Bible’s Old Testament. “We’ve had to think about the issue of providing sanctuary. When there’s a conflict between man’s laws and God’s laws, we have an obligation to side with God’s laws.”

Organizations representing Haitian TPS holders sued DHS in March 2025 when then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem first attempted to terminate TPS. Over the last year, federal courts undid Noem’s partial vacation of the legal status, which sought to revoke the Biden administration’s February 2026 extension and force recipients to return to Haiti in August 2025, and blocked the government from ending the program. The Trump administration appealed the case to the Supreme Court in March, asking the justices to consider whether the statute governing TPS prevents courts from reviewing the department secretary’s designation of status.

According to the court’s six conservative justices, the answer is yes.

“The TPS statute plainly bars consideration of respondents’ non-constitutional claims,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion. “It allows ‘no judicial review of any determination … with respect to the … termination of a TPS designation.”

Syrian and Haitian TPS holders are not entitled to orders postponing the termination of their designations during litigation. Nor did the Haitian respondents provide sufficient evidence that the contentious statements Trump and Noem made demonstrate that racial animus motivated the termination of Haitians’ TPS, the court held. In his concurrence, Justice Clarence Thomas even claimed that “aliens” did not have federal protections under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

The ruling was sweeping in its scope and doubly crushing after counsel for the Haitian respondents last week asked the court to dismiss the case due to newly discovered evidence they believed would support their equal protection claim.

(Tatyana Tandanpolie for Salon) People rally in Springfield, Ohio in support of migrants who lost temporary protected status from a recent Supreme Court ruling.

“The new rule from the Supreme Court is that when it comes to TPS decisions, the administration — any executive branch agency — can break the law flagrantly, openly and make no secret of it, and the federal courts can’t stop it,” Geoff Pipoly, lead attorney for the Haitian respondents, said during the press conference.

Pipoly said he and his legal team were still reviewing the opinion and planned to evaluate what’s left of the claims to see if any legal recourse remains.

“The Supreme Court’s decision means that many, many people are going to die violent, needless deaths,” he added. “That’s the bottom line.”

Despite what the Trump administration has said and the Supreme Court ruled, the situation in Haiti is still dire, and TPS holders know that, a small group of Haitian and Haitian-American attendees told Salon Thursday during an evening vigil in Springfield’s city center.

Marc Joseph, who provides immigration and legal services through Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio and has only resided in Springfield for two to three years, recalled the horrors he and his family faced living in Haiti. In 2019, he and his wife witnessed gangsters kill her little brother and ran for their lives lest their children be orphaned. In 2021, his older brother was shot and killed outside an immigration building in Haiti. Later, his aunt and two of his cousins were killed as gangs fought over territory.

“I don’t really understand why this decision come up because where are we going to send 300,000 Haitians?” Joseph, who is a U.S. citizen, said. “This situation in Haiti is still a reality.”

Laura, a Haitian Creole interpreter who asked Salon to only use her first name, said that she witnessed the sheer terror that came over Haitian TPS recipients as she and her mother broke the news of the decision throughout the day; she described a mother whose heart dropped as the disbelief gave way to a choking fear of what would happen to her American-born children.

Attendees of a vigil in Springfield City Hall hold hands while singing songs in support of their neighbors.

“This woman clung to her baby, and said, ‘I just had this baby. I’m still bleeding from my cesarean, and to say they will start deportation, will they rip my child away?’” Margery Koveleski, a freelance interpreter, told Salon. “She said, ‘I literally would commit suicide if they take me into detention and they take my child away.’”

Koveleski, Laura, Joseph and Mia Perez, event speaker and founder of immigrant advocacy organization Voices of Immigrants, all said they felt called to attend the event because they knew many of their community members could not.

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Hundreds of organizers, supporters and residents convened in the stone courtyard of City Hall around 6 p.m. They held signs reading “Love your neighbor as yourself,” cheered as local clergy-turned-activists spoke out against the ruling and joined the World House Choir in protest song. “Everyone of these people are ours” rang out in harmony against a light summer breeze as organizers passed around cards for attendees to fill out, urging the state’s two Republican Senators, Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted, to vote for SB 4814, which would designate TPS for Haitians through the end of Trump’s term.

A teacher in Springfield City, who declined to share their name out of concern for potential repercussions, told Salon they came to the vigil to show support for all the people affected by the ruling.

“I work with a lot of Haitian students, and their safety and well-being is very important to me, as well as the safety and well-being of the people in this community,” they said, holding a handmade sign that read “Protect Our Haitian Neighbors.”

“It just is very disheartening seeing the distress on my students’ faces when they come into school, and knowing what they are dealing with at home, which is then reflected in the school day,” they said.

“I came out here because no one’s illegal on stolen land, and because our community is incredibly important,” Aspen Forest, a 26-year-old community organizer, told Salon. Though Forest had only just learned of the turmoil in Springfield, they were eager to help, scouting out the donation links posted on a board by the makeshift stage and bouncing ideas of how to coordinate pop-up food drives and donations at the soup kitchen they work with in Dayton to benefit the anticipated need in Springfield.

“Humanity as a whole, we are one big community,” Forest said. “We have so many greater powers that want to turn us against each other, so that we lose sight of what power we do have, and that is to take care of each other on the very ground-level of community.”

Cynthia Lennon, a resident of nearby Xenia, Ohio, told Salon her faith brought her to the vigil. She wore a bright turquoise shirt that referenced Bible scripture from Leviticus 19:33-34, which commands followers to love the foreigner as they love themselves.

As speakers took the mic and sang “America the Beautiful,” Lennon, a child of Irish and Scottish immigrants, dismissed herself briefly to sing along. She let out an off-key warble, turning to face the small group of anti-immigrant protesters waving weathered American flags and taunting the crowd as she projected.

“I just wanted to be a part of that because that’s important,” she said before listing off Springfield’s inevitable losses and her fears as a result of the ruling. “I’m scared that we’re going to have a Minneapolis again … That people of color might just be generally targeted.” Still, she said she has plans to donate and volunteer with local organizations.

Throughout the hour-and-a-half-long vigil, Dorsainvil projected his usual image of strength to the audience, speaking first to his fellow Haitians, then to their legal team, and then his fellow Springfielders as well as Americans across the country.

“Your compassion has reminded us of the very best of America,” he said. “You have welcomed your neighbors, spoken out against injustice, defended vulnerable families and refused to let hate and division have the final word. [Your] friendship and your courage have given hope to many people during one of the most difficult chapters of their lives.”

“To every immigrant family who is anxious tonight, there are people across this nation who believe in you, who stayed with you, and who will continue advocating for your rights and your dignity,” Dorsainvil added.

After the vigil had ended, when the crowd had cleared and the lingering press packed up their equipment, his brave face seemed to fall again.

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Dorsainvil said softly, his head hanging and gaze distant, when asked what was next for him. He was worried about how the termination of his TPS would affect his pursuit of a master’s degree at Wright State University. “I might be considered an out-of-state resident, [which would] make my courses more expensive.”

He would later reflect on what it meant for him to be the national spokesperson of Haitian Springfield for the better part of two years — and the toll it took as he’s sorted out a pending asylum application and concerns for his family members behind the scenes. The community needed someone to do it, he explained.

“To me, everyone has some type of conscience that would help them take the best decision because we were created with God’s value in us. Even though we know that the world is evil, we know for sure that everyone has God’s value that would guide them to know what to do,” Dorsainvil added. “If they go against it, it’s because of their free will. But many Americans know exactly what to do, and what they should do is to continue to support minority groups, marginalized people. Show up for them, speak on their behalf. That will make a lot of difference.”