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Ohio’s Haitian Immigrants are In Danger

Ohio’s Haitian Immigrants are In Danger

Last updated on: January 30, 2026 at 1:53 pm by Mary Pezzulo

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Ohio’s Haitian Immigrants are In Danger 2026-01-30T13:53:44-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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the flag of the State of Ohio

the flag of the State of Ohio, via Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain.

It’s being reported that Ohio’s Haitian immigrant population, particularly the ones in Springfield, may be facing an ICE invasion as soon as next week.

My readers know that I live in Ohio and have been following the smear campaign against the Haitian immigrants in Springfield. I want to remind you of what I said in 2024 about the Haitians and the people spreading lies about them. Everything I’m going to say in this post is documented with links in the previous one.

First of all, the approximately 15000 Haitian immigrants in Springfield are in the country perfectly legally (or they will be until next week). They applied for asylum and got it. They applied for work permits and got them. They didn’t come to Springfield in order to commit crimes, but to work in local industries. They came to work in local industries because the industries invited them and hired them. That turned Springfield, which had been an economically depressed town with a dwindling population, into a bustling little boomtown with a lot of new people in it. Those are facts.

It is also a fact that the sudden influx of immigrants DID put a strain on social services in town and make it harder to get an apartment: not because the immigrants did something wrong, but just because that’s what happens when a town changes population sizes quickly. The exact same thing would have happened if ten thousand people from Sweden or ten thousand natural born United States citizens from around the Steubenville area moved into Springfield. The residents of Springfield reported that they didn’t mind their new neighbors or blame them for the situation, but they did express that the wished there were more services available to teach the Haitians English and driving skills. Further, it’s a fact that the new immigrant population did not raise the crime rate in any significant way. The levels of violent crimes and burglaries in Springfield remained the same. All the problems that occurred in Springfield could have been solved by better social services and better infrastructure.

The clamor against Springfield’s Haitian immigrants began after a fatal car accident where one Haitian immigrant, who was driving unlicensed, crossed the median and hit another car. That immigrant was quickly tried and sent to prison. He will be there for another eight years. The parents of the accident victim publicly stated that their son was a loving person and not a racist, and begged people not to blame Haitians in general for his death. But the story spread, and white supremacists began harassing Springfield, holding demonstrations and showing up at town council meetings to decry the Haitians. It seems to have been one of these agitators that started the now infamous rumor that Haitians eat cats and dogs.

There have been NO reported cases of Haitian immigrants stealing pets in Springfield. The Springfield mayor and police department both said it wasn’t happening. The people who wanted to smear the Haitians began spreading the news story of a Black woman from Canton, Ohio, who stole and mutilated a neighbor’s cat while having a psychotic break, but that woman was not an immigrant but a citizen, and Canton is three hours away from Springfield. There was also a viral photo of a Black man standing on the street holding a dead goose, which was said to be a Haitian stealing a goose from a park in Springfield. But it turned out that that was a photo of a man in Columbus, an hour from Springfield: he, too, was a US citizen, and he was not stealing the goose but moving it out of the road where it had just been struck by a car. There was one case of a Springfield woman who accused her Haitian neighbors of stealing her cat, but she found the cat alive in her own house an hour later and promptly apologized. The Haitians simply weren’t stealing pets. But the urban legend had become a meme, and it persisted.

One of the internet trolls who pushed the urban legend was a certain one-term United States Senator who was famous for despising people from Ohio. His name was J. D. Vance. Vance’s only claim to fame prior to going into politics was writing a patronizing memoir about his own childhood where he portrayed the citizens of Ohio as fat, lazy, freeloading hicks. But he didn’t seem to like that another group of people who were eager to work hard and better themselves was now living in Ohio either. He stirred up the trolls. He encouraged them to keep sharing racist dog and cat memes even after the story was debunked. He was openly and unabashedly doing this to spread and normalize the notion that a large influx of immigrants is an invasion that hurts and endangers “real” Americans.

I begged every one of you not to vote for Trump and Vance, but I didn’t get my wish. Vance is now one aspirin-saturated heartbeat away from the presidency.

As the president becomes more and more impaired, Vance is taking on a more and more active role in the government. And he still hates immigrants (as well as everybody else).

And on this coming Tuesday, February Third, the thousands of Haitian immigrants in Springfield will lose their temporary protected status. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is said to be getting ready to descend on Springfield to wreak havoc as early as Wednesday.

Let me remind you, these people are not illegal immigrants. Personally, I wouldn’t care if they were. But they are people who “did things the right way” and followed our immigration laws. The one immigrant who made headlines by committing a crime was apprehended and is in prison. The other immigrants have been law-abiding in their new homes. They are employed and boosting the economy in a part of the country which has been through an economic slump. They are trying to assimilate and learn our language and live the American dream, without an ideal amount of resources to help them. Most of their neighbors don’t want them to leave. But on February Third, suddenly, through no fault of their own, they’re going to turn into “illegals” like Cinderella’s coach turning back into a pumpkin. And then ICE will show up and violently arrest as many of them as they can catch, just as they’ve been doing in Minnesota. The Haitians will be taken to detention centers and we don’t know how long they’ll be there or what will be done to them while they await deportation back to the country they fled.

How would you feel if you were abiding by the law, working and paying rent in your home, and suddenly the government decided you weren’t allowed to be there anymore– and then sent armed thugs to violently drag you to a prison?

This has nothing to do with the law. It’s enforcing the whim of a racist misanthrope who hates Ohio and his former constituents.

It has nothing to do with the safety of American citizens. They’re just doing it because they can, for a show of force and cruelty. They are doing it to terrorize people of color, to please racists, and also to intimidate Americans of all races into not objecting to anything the administration wants to do.

This is not law enforcement. It’s ethnic cleansing.

As a citizen of Ohio myself, I hope we can be as courageous as the citizens of Minnesota have been.

I am ashamed of my country.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to “The Little Portion” on paypal or Mary Pezzulo on venmo

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