Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio are being required to wear ankle monitors and turn their passports over to United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Haitians in Springfield are getting letters telling them to report to the ICE office in either Blue Ash (near Cincinnati) or Westerville (near Columbus).
“When they do, their passports are collected,” said Carl Ruby, pastor of Springfield’s Central Christian Church.
“They’re fitted with ankle (monitors); I call them ankle shackles.”
This is happening after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that President Donald Trump can end temporary protected status for the 330,000 Haitians who’ve fled the violence in their home country.
TPS officially ended for Haitians on July 27 and a court lifted an injunction last week.
About 15,000 Haitians live in Springfield, with a mixture of temporary protected status, citizenship, and other legal status.
Even though about 30,000 Haitians with temporary status live in central Ohio, only Haitians in Springfield are being asked to wear the ankle monitors as of now, Ruby said.
“What you’re seeing in Ohio is a Springfield focused effort,” he said.
He has gone down to ICE’s Blue Ash office with some Haitians to receive their ankle monitors, which can track where people are at any given moment and have about a 75 mile radius, Ruby said.
“The ICE officers indicated, ‘If you keep coming back every time we call you, that may help your immigration case,’ which I don’t believe,” he said.
“I think it’s a means to round up people quickly, and that when they’re ready, they have the logistics in place to deport them. I think that’s what’s going to happen.”
The Haitians are then told to report back to the ICE office when they are summoned, which is expected to be every three to four weeks, Ruby said.
“It’s inciting a lot of fear,” Ruby said. “I think (ICE’s) real goal is for them to self-deport. … I think it boils down to they want to have complete control over them, so (ICE) can easily deport them as soon as they’re ready.”
Ruby is unaware of any Haitians from Springfield who have self-deported back to Haiti.
The U.S. Department of State currently has a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for Haiti “due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care,” according to the state department. A top security official and chief of staff to the nation’s defense minister was kidnapped in June.
“It just makes me sick thinking of the sexual violence that is the norm in Haiti,” Ruby said. “There there are kids who sat next to our kids in Springfield City Schools who are going to be raped if they’re sent back, and that’s just the truth.”
More than 1,000 children born in Springfield with American citizenship have Haitian parents. Springfield City Schools declined to comment for the story.
ICE detained 35 people — including four Haitians — in central Ohio between Aug. 5 through Aug. 10, said Maqueli Eldredge, a paralegal at Legal Immigration Services in Dublin. Ruby said he has not noticed an increased ICE presence in Springfield.
“They say they would come for the Haitians on this special task force, but they take any collateral damage people,” Eldredge said in a text message.
The ICE office in Westerville was full of Haitians coming out with ankle monitors when Eldredge was there last week.
Many of their Brazilian clients in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia were asked to start wearing ankle monitors in July 2025. She said they have a 16-year-old client wearing an ankle monitor in Pittsburgh.
“It is very embarrassing to wear them,” Eldredge said in a text message. “(The) devices cause lesions, rashes and blisters, bleeding on their ankles.”
She said it can be hard for their clients to sleep with the ankle monitors.
“It beeps in the middle of the night and (it’s) hard to get comfortable,” Eldredge said in a text message.
The ankle monitors will start beeping if the battery is not functioning well, Eldredge said.
“They break all the time and batteries malfunction and get very hot, some caught on fire when charging,” she said in a text message.
Some people are afraid of going back to the ICE office, so Eldredge knows folks who have cut off the ankle monitors and leave the state or self-deport.
“(Officials) follow up where they leave that monitor and sometimes just take some collaterals,” she said.
Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Megan Henry on X or on Bluesky.
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