Haitian migrants changed this US town - Trump's deportation drive is reshaping it again
The president thrust Springfield, Ohio, into the spotlight with a false pet-eating claim - years later, it remains at the heart of the immigration debate.
Key points
- Pierre Damas Bel, 20, a Haitian migrant in Springfield, Ohio, died on 31 August after being fitted with an ICE ankle monitor.
- The Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's decision to end TPS for about 350,000 Haitians in the US.
- Trump says Springfield residents are "getting their town back" as his deportation drive removes Haitians.
Springfield, Ohio, has become a focal point of President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign, the BBC reports. Trump has said residents of the town are "getting their town back" as Haitian migrants are removed, after he once repeated a false claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets there.
The town's Haitian population, estimated at around 20,000, arrived within the last five years, many after Haiti's 2010 earthquake or the unrest following President Jovenel Moise's assassination in 2021. Many held Temporary Protected Status, which let them live and work legally in the US.
Death of a young migrant
Pierre Damas Bel, 20, came to Springfield in 2024 to join his father and stepmother, fleeing political instability and gang warfare in Haiti. A family friend said he received TPS and was an honours student, athlete and high school cadet.
In June, the Supreme Court upheld the administration's decision to end TPS for some 350,000 Haitians. Bel was told to report to an ICE field office, where he was fitted with an ankle monitor. He wrote on Instagram of "shame and humiliation", and on 31 August he parked near Springfield, walked into oncoming traffic and was killed. His family blamed his death on his feelings about the monitor.
He did everything right to be here until they put the tag on him.
— Viles Dorsainvil
Legal battle and local views
The administration announced in June 2025 it would remove TPS for Haitians, and the legal fight reached the Supreme Court, which ruled in its favour in the summer. More than a million immigrants from 13 countries have had TPS terminated. DHS general counsel James Percival said the ruling was "a win for the rule of law and common sense".
Springfield resident Rick Johnson, a Marine veteran, backed the deportation drive, telling the BBC: "If you come here you [should] come here legally." Grocer Paschur Castelly, who left Haiti 20 years ago, said he cannot buy new stock because customers have stopped coming.
