Church pews. (Photo via Getty Images.)
This story was originally reported by Amanda Becker from 19. Get to know Amanda and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy.
Church-supervised centers that provide home and care for children separated from their parents. Phone chains that enable citizens’ networks to be activated when federal immigration agents are detected in the community. Volunteers deliver food to hungry neighbors in their own cars instead of pantry trucks. Training on what to do if agents break into one of the churches planning to provide shelter to immigrant families.
These are just some of the preparations residents of Springfield, Ohio, have made in recent days as the country nears the end of an immigration program that allowed approximately 330,000 Haitians legally live and work in the United States due to the rampant violence and political instability in Haiti. While conditions there have not improved – and may have only worsened – Temporary Protected Status (TPS) expires for Haitians on February 3. As many as 15,000 immigrants, many of them Haitians, remain in the Springfield area, and the city of about 60,000 is stepping up efforts to protect its community from the cluttered, brutal attack by federal immigration agents that claimed two lives in Minneapolis in recent weeks.
“The fear in society is as high as it can be,” said Marjory Wentworth, a poet and member of the faith-based coalition G92, which formed last year to support the Haitian community in Springfield.
Central to the largely faith-based constellation of groups and coalitions is the number of thousands of Haitian and Haitian-American children in Springfield who are at risk of being separated from their parents if ICE launches targeted or broad-based enforcement actions. Catholic Charities of St. For the past eight months, Vincent de Paul has been calling on Haitian parents who come to their community center to obtain US passports for your American-born children in case you need to self-deport to Haiti or a third country. Efforts have also been made to provide kinship care and care in the event of a worst-case scenario of family separation.
Many Haitians in Springfield are still praying for a last-minute clemency from the courts. Two cases are pending before federal judges that challenge the Trump administration’s decision to end TPS for Haitians given conditions in their country – one is expected to be issued before the TPS end date. But the Springfield network that has supported Haitians there is moving forward, preparing for what more than one has described as a potential “siege” from ICE as the administration may appeal the verdict – or ignore it altogether.
“For a long time, it felt like we were facing a train coming towards us,” said the Rev. Carl Ruby, whose congregation has been a vocal advocate for Haitians.
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Late last week, word came from Ohio Gov. DeWine’s office that it was time to “activate churches,” as one faith-based organization leader put it, in other words, prepare to provide emergency care and short-term housing for children separated from their parents. Amy Willmann of the Nehemiah Foundation, a local group named after the biblical figure who supposedly rebuilt Jerusalem, was selected as the lead person. She said their network has 28 churches and 114 volunteers who have already done background checks. These volunteers will staff “centers” where children can go if they return from school to an empty home or are received by Children’s Services after a parent is picked up by ICE. DeWine, a term-limited Republican in his final year in office, did declared additional support from the state.
Willmann said the top priority is to let Haitian parents know that the volunteers are not looking to adopt their children, they just want to make sure they will be protected in a potentially volatile situation.
“We want you to know that they can stay in a safe place until they are reunited with you. We know that some of them [the parents] they deport themselves and take their children with them, some of them will take their children with them to the detention center. But we also know that some people are already choosing to leave their children here because they don’t want to take them to a detention center or to Haiti,” Willmann said.
On Saturday, G92 conducted a quick training event that attracted nearly 200 people to a local church. Although it was initially intended to be the series finale, so many fresh faces showed up that organizers decided to make it more of an all-hands-on-deck affair. As G92 member and social worker Jill Potter-Bonsell put it: “The demographic of these people is changing, and more and more ordinary people who wouldn’t normally be involved in these types of issues are concerned and feel a moral obligation to do something.”
Participants learned about their First Amendment rights and the newly increased risks of exercising them. They acted out potential scenarios that community members might encounter when they encounter Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents on their streets and in their churches. On Donald Trump’s first day back in office, his administration ended policies that protected churches, schools and hospitals from immigration enforcement. As actors playing ICE agents burst through the church’s sanctuary doors, some attendees took out their cellphones to start recording. A woman in a wheelchair was circling the aisle, obstructing the agents’ path. Many fell to their knees and began to pray.
“Most of them took place in our sanctuary — no pun intended,” said Ruby, whose church hosted the training. “We tried to put everything we had learned over the last year into one training session that was very focused on what might happen in Springfield over the next few weeks.”
The recent death of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of federal immigration agents in Minneapolis hung over the training — organizers emphasized considerations of personal safety and their commitment to nonviolent resistance, based on the belief that “as Christians we are called to stand up to injustice,” Ruby said. Halfway through, Ruby learned that federal immigration agents had shot Alex Pretti and announced it to the group. As participants prepared for a break, they received news that a 37-year-old ICU nurse had died.
“It was very sobering because when I saw what happened to Renee Good, I realized that the same thing could happen to some of the people we were training because we were training people to videotape what they saw and they could do the exact same things and get shot by ICE,” Ruby said.
Many Springfield residents preparing for the end of TPS and what may come next said it reminded them of 2024, when Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance publicized lies about Haitians on social media and when white nationalist groups attacked their city. Disinformation “spread like wildfire” at the time, said Jen Casto, a G92 member and community activist. In recent days, she heard that ICE enforcement would begin on January 28, then begin on February 3 and last for 30 days; she heard that 1,500 federal agents had been assigned to the city and then that they had a priority list of 300 people in line for deportation. No one really knows what to expect, so they try to prepare for everything, Casto said.
“I’m kind of going back to it, but on a different level,” Casto said today compared to what her community faced in 2024. “But right now, I don’t think we’re as worried about hate groups coming here as we have been in the past… I think the main fear right now is that ICE or other federal entities are going to come here and just destroy our community.”
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