Haitians in Springfield were thrust into the spotlight — now they’re bracing to leave

SPRINGFIELD — Viles Dorsainvil looks down at his hands — pauses — and says he doesn’t know what his future will look like.

The soft-spoken 39-year-old’s hesitant voice echoes the anxiety of thousands of Haitians in his small Ohio city who were promised safety and employment in the United States. They are now scrambling after the Trump administration moved to revoke their protected status.

“It’s as if you are inviting me to come to your house, telling me I will be okay and everything will be fine,” Dorsainvil said in Springfield. “Then all of a sudden you start giving me cold shoulders.”

U.S. President Donald Trump campaigned on clamping down on immigration and last year thrust Springfield into international spotlight by falsely claiming Haitian immigrants in the Ohio city were eating cats and dogs.

Even after the viral presidential debate moment, there was hope Haitians would be spared. Most entered the United States legally. They had jobs. They paid taxes. They were helping the local economy.

But in June the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it would end temporary protected status, or TPS, for about 500,000 Haitians, saying conditions in the island nation had improved. After court intervention, TPS revocation was pushed back to February.

TPS allowed people to stay and work legally if their homelands are deemed unsafe.

Gangs have grown in power since the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. The United Nations in July warned that Haiti’s gangs gained “near-total control” of the capital. The impoverished Caribbean nation has been plagued by violence, disease and political upheaval following a catastrophic earthquake in 2010.

Dorsainvil was working for church organizations in Haiti when people began approaching him for money. His mother was worried that he would be kidnapped for ransom and asked Dorsainvil to go to a safer location.

He arrived in the United States at the end of 2020 and made his way to see a nephew who was already in Springfield. Dorsainvil didn’t initially expect to stay long but following Moïse’s assassination he applied for TPS to legally work.

Dorsainvil first thought Springfield was scary — mostly because he arrived in the dead of winter during a snowstorm. As the weather warmed, he got to know his neighbours, appreciate the historic downtown buildings and embrace the quiet slow pace of the city.

He was employed in Amazon warehouses and with the local department of jobs and family services. He volunteered his time at Springfield organizations.

Dorsainvil, who is now the executive director of the Haitian Support Center, says his story is similar to the estimated 10,000 Haitians that have in recent years settled in Springfield — a city of around 60,000 west of the state capital.

Central Christian Church Pastor Carl Ruby says he thinks the “arrival of Haitians is one of the best things to happen to Springfield in a long, long, long time.”

Springfield was built by waves of immigrants, Ruby says. The city peaked with around 90,000 people in the 1970s but as manufacturing changed its population declined.

“We were in bad shape,” Ruby said. “The first time we’d grown in 70 years is when Haitians showed up.”

The rapid influx of people reinvigorated local manufacturing and Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine has said businesses were grateful to have the help of a growing labour force.

The population boom also put some pressure on local housing and language services in schools. Ruby says the city contacted its then-Sen. JD Vance to request extra funding.

Instead of helping, Ruby says, Vance shared the debunked social media post about Haitians eating cats and dogs. That got to Trump — and soon it was repeated live on national television.

What followed were bomb threats and white supremacists, Ruby says. Haitians were afraid to leave their homes.

While the media spotlight faded, uncertainty for the city and its burgeoning Haitian population increased. DeWine warned the end of TPS could mean massive unemployment among Haitians and thousands of jobs that need to be filled for local industry. Finding workers was already an issue in the area.

“It’s not going to be good,” DeWine said during a news conference in July.

Many Haitians have already lost jobs with employers uncertain about their employment status. Dorsainvil says some are looking to move to other countries, including Canada with its large Haitian diaspora.

It’s difficult to relocate north unless there is a direct family connection and some people may make perilous journeys to cross illegally.

Earlier this month, 44 people, mostly Haitian, were found in what RCMP described as “horrific” conditions inside a cube truck in Quebec near the United States border.

Police said the migrants, which included a pregnant woman and children as young as four, told officers they had crossed the border on foot, walking for two hours until the truck picked them up.

Melissa Claisse of Welcome Collective, a Montreal-based resource centre for refugees, said “nobody takes such a dangerous journey unless staying put feels even more dangerous.”

“Haitians face inhumane conditions in U.S. detention as well as deportation to a country that is categorically unsafe, by any standard,” Claisse said in an email. “Canada agrees that Haiti is too dangerous to deport people to — that’s why we’ve paused removals.”

She called for Canada to reconsider the Safe Third Country Agreement, which states that a refugee claimant landing in either Canada or the U.S. must make their claim in the country in which they first arrive. It is based on the idea that both countries are equally safe for refugees.

In Springfield, the faith community is coming together to build a network to help Haitians, including some churches who are devising how they could provide physical sanctuary if it is needed next year.

Ruby says the situation has not tested his faith – instead it has strengthened his resolve.

“I think obedience to Christ requires that we support immigrants and love them as we love ourselves and treat them like our brothers.”

— With files from The Associated Press

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 23, 2025.