Up until mid-September, Haitian immigrants in Springfield were given a draconian choice when reporting to ICE offices: walk out with an ankle monitor or “self-deport” back to Haiti. This small city in central Ohio is home to over 15,000 Haitian immigrants of mixed legal status.
In June, the Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump’s termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations for a dozen-plus countries. This struck uncertainty and fear into the over one million immigrants living in the US previously granted legal status under the law, including 330,000 Haitians. Currently in limbo are 170,000 Salvadorans whose protection status was set to expire in September. All they’ve been given is a government memo that an announcement will be made “at the appropriate time.” In Springfield, whose immigrant community was racistly referenced by Trump during the 2024 presidential debate, there has been a 142% increase in ICE detentions of Haitians since the ruling came down.
Most tragically, Haitian immigrant Pierre Damas Bel, an honors student and soccer player at Wright State University who entered the US legally in 2024, died by suicide in August reportedly after being forced to wear an ankle monitor. As he wrote in an Instagram post a month before his death, “I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone. Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience.”
While the ankle monitor program is being quietly phased out and replaced with a tracking app following mass pressure, hundreds of immigrants are still wearing them and facing the fear of detention. This is what the new phase of Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdown looks like. To abolish ICE and win full citizenship rights for all immigrants, we need to escalate the anti-ICE movement.
Trump Takes Down TPS
Temporary Protected Status, established in 1990, previously granted legal entry to over one million immigrants in the US forced to flee their home countries, including Venezuelans, Hondurans, and Syrians. Though the program is “temporary” in name, the reality is many of these immigrants have been in the US for a very long time, building lives and families in working-class communities. Many are union members, and whole sections of the economy rely substantially on them, particularly in healthcare, construction, and logistics.
TPS was instated for Haitians in 2010 following a catastrophic earthquake in Haiti, which contributed to ongoing instability in the country. Other countries have fallen under TPS for even longer—including Sudan for 28 years and Honduras for 27 years. It is the destructive and destabilizing role of US imperialism in other countries that forces many immigrants to flee in the first place. While Trump campaigned on ending “forever wars,” he has instead escalated the centuries-old legacy of US imperialism in a manner more brazen than ever, with wars and military operations in over half a dozen countries. It’s no coincidence that many of these countries were on the TPS list (until Trump terminated them earlier this year). The Trump regime wants to throw immigrants back into these deadly conditions that even they acknowledge—last year they declared a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory to Haiti.
Deporting and terrorizing these documented immigrants does not actually help Trump make “progress” towards his stated goal of eliminating the undocumented population, but that was never the only point. The winding down of TPS is part of the regime’s overall strategy of scapegoating immigrants for the crises of capitalism, from the shortage of housing to the lack of jobs. It also aims to deepen the desperation of this terrorized underclass of immigrant workers in this country, which will help drive down the floor of wages and working conditions they will tolerate.
New Phase Of The Crackdown
Ending TPS is part of the new phase of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Since January 23, when the historic Minneapolis general strike forced an end to Operation Metro Surge, there have been no more military-style ICE occupations. However, this certainly did not mean an end to ICE raids—without continued mass pressure, the Trump regime has had time to regroup, adjust tactics, and ramp arrests back up to their highest numbers yet.
Part of this shift has entailed an expanded battle in the courts. This has included backlash against the anti-ICE movement with the federal indictment of 15 peaceful anti-ICE protesters in Minnesota, the ongoing push to overturn birthright citizenship, and paving the way to give Trump the ability to restart the reinstatement of an Obama-era law that allows for the physical blocking of asylum seekers at the border. Most recently, a new policy going into effect will allow ICE officers to deny green cards to immigrants using public benefits like Medicaid, SNAP, and even student financial aid. DHS estimates that this can result in 950,000 people choosing to unenroll in these programs.
No More Deportations!
The arrests of our Haitian neighbors have sparked mass outrage across Ohio. Throughout August, community organizations and local clergy organized peaceful protests outside of the Blue Ash ICE office to show support for Haitian immigrants going in for their hearings. These hearings brought out upwards of 500 anti-ICE protesters on multiple Sundays at sunrise.
The death of Pierre Damas Bel provoked more protest, leading toward a small Ohio statewide action on September 13. This was an important step forward in reviving the anti-ICE movement that took place from coast to coast earlier this year. But to actually reverse the direction of ICE terror, we need more sustained, larger-scale action nationwide. We need mass involvement from the labor movement, as was critical in Minneapolis, to build workplace action and strikes against Trump’s reign of terror, as well as student walkouts as semesters start up. Unions like SEIU, the Teamsters, and UNITE HERE need to go on the offensive for their immigrant members—and for our class as a whole.
In addition to demanding the end of ICE, we need to fight to reinstate TPS with a path to full citizenship rights, and we need an end to the destructive, expensive forays of US imperialism. Trump and his billionaire buddies know that US-born and immigrant workers are far stronger together, and when united, pose a real threat to his regime. Only through united, working-class struggle can we overthrow Trump’s xenophobic, racist rule, and the whole system of oppression and exploitation.