Ohio’s GOP Gov Slams Trump’s Plans To Send ICE After Haitian Migrants

Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine isn’t happy with the Trump administration’s plan to deport thousands of Haitians who lost Temporary Protected Status (TPS) this week, warning the move would hurt the state’s economy.

More than 300,000 Haitian migrants lost TPS on Monday, prompting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to unleash officers to prioritize deportation efforts, instructing them to focus on areas that have been overrun by Haitian migrants like Springfield, Ohio.

One ICE source recently told The Daily Wire that arrests of Haitians are now being seen as a “priority” since TPS ended.

But in DeWine’s view, “It’s a mistake,” he told CBS News Monday. “It’s not good for the United States and it’s not good for the state of Ohio.”

DeWine argued that Ohio has seen an economic boom and that “60% of that growth has come from immigrants.”

“These are people who have helped Springfield really come back. Springfield has been making a real comeback. The Haitians who are living there and are employed there, they came there to work and they came there because there were jobs that were not being filled by other people,” he said.

“These are people who have opened restaurants, they’ve opened other businesses, they’ve rehabbed houses, they’ve created jobs, as well as filled jobs. And so to lose them and have them not be able to work anymore and possibly taken out of this country is frankly a blow to Springfield, and it’s a blow to the state of Ohio,” he said.

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Springfield, where an estimated 20,000 Haitian immigrants settled in recent years, became a focus of then-candidate Donald Trump’s pledge to carry out a mass deportation on the campaign trail in 2024. At the time, Trump cited unconfirmed reports that Haitian migrants were stealing and eating residents’ pets and vowed to “absolutely” revoke their TPS if re-elected.

The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a major victory in June that allowed the federal government to terminate TPS for Haitians and Syrians. The federal government first granted TPS for Haitian nationals more than a decade ago.

The administration argued that the designation, which was enacted after a devastating earthquake in 2010, was no longer needed because the “environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home,” according to CBS News.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also said that the Haitian population posed a “risk” to the United States and that the TPS designation was “not in the national interest.”

Citing continued political turmoil and “virtual chaos” in Haiti, DeWine decried Trump’s broader deportation plan for Haitians.

“Haiti is hell today. So you’d be sending people … back to hell,” he said. “Very few of these Haitians will voluntarily go back to Haiti. If they have to leave, they’ll go someplace else. They want to work. They want to support their family. They don’t want to go back to Haiti.”