Ohio senators, governor respond to calls from Brown to extend protections for Haitians

While thousands of Haitian immigrants feared an enforcement action in Springfield, former Sen. Sherrod Brown last week called on Ohio’s top Republicans to join him in demanding an extension of the Haitians’ temporary protected status.

Gov. Mike DeWine had already criticized termination of the protections. Sen. Bernie Moreno reiterated his stance that the protections were temporary, regardless of conditions in Haiti. 

And Sen. Jon Husted — Brown’s opponent in the midterm election — didn’t respond.

The large Haitian community in Springfield gained notoriety in 2024 when then-candidate Donald Trump and then-U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance amplified false information that the immigrants were stealing neighbors’ pets and eating them.

In November, Kristi Noem, President Donald Trump’s Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, moved to end temporary protected status for Haitians.

When protected status for 350,000 Haitians was set to expire on Tuesday, there were rumors that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were going to sweep into Springfield and mount an aggressive, controversial enforcement action as they have in Minneapolis. 

However, just before that status was set to expire, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes issued a stay. It said the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, who included a neuroscientist and a software engineer, “are likely to succeed on their claim that anti-Black and anti-Haitian animus motivated Secretary Noem’s decision to terminate Haiti’s (temporary protected status) designation.”

The judge cited a Dec. 1 social media post Noem authored days after issuing her termination order. 

“I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,” it said.

Reyes also ruled that Noem failed to properly consider conditions in the country where the immigrants would be sent if their protected status were terminated.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres last month said that the 15-year-old crisis in Haiti was deepening.

“Violence has intensified and expanded geographically, exacerbating food insecurity and instability, as transitional governance arrangements near expiry and overdue elections remain urgent,” he said in a report.

Despite Reyes’s ruling, deep anxieties persist for protected Haitians in Springfield and elsewhere. A higher court could overturn her stay. Or the plaintiffs could lose at trial.

Last week, Brown, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, posted a call on Facebook to extend protected status, and for Ohio’s Republican leaders to join him.

“I’m calling on Gov. Mike DeWine and Sens. Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno to put Ohio communities first and join my call to extend (temporary protected status) for the Haitian community,” it said.

The post added, “Haitian Americans don’t have a safe place to return to in Haiti and communities across Ohio depend on them to help our economy thrive.”

DeWine’s office responded to Brown’s post by arguing that Brown was a little late to the party. A Cleveland Plain Dealer story the day before Brown’s post said DeWine slammed Noem’s decision to terminate protected status for selected Haitians in a meeting with the paper’s editorial board.

“The facts on the ground in Haiti indicate it’s a worse situation there than it’s ever been,” DeWine told the paper.

DeWine was born in Springfield and still has a home in Greene County. He’s been an advocate for the city’s Haitian immigrants — including by condemning Trump and Vance’s lies about them during the 2024 campaign.

Moreno, who defeated Brown in 2024, didn’t heed Brown’s call. Instead, he slammed Reyes’s stay on the termination of protected status.

“When a Democrat president can create a TEMPORARY program and an unelected Democrat judge can unilaterally block a duly-elected Republican president from ever undoing it, we do not live in a democracy,” he said in a Monday post on X. “It’s not Permanent Protected Status. This outrageous decision cannot stand.”

He was referring to the fact that many Haitians received protective status after a catastrophic earthquake in 2010. That status has been repeatedly renewed ever since.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s secretary is required to make “an assessment of whether the conditions in the foreign country have materially improved, such that the reason for the initial grant of TPS no longer applies,” according to the American Immigration Council.

According to several international groups, the situation has deteriorated. The International Rescue Committee ranks Haiti fifth among the “top ten crises the world can’t ignore in 2026.” The list says problems in Haiti are more acute than in places such as Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Husted’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal. View the original article.