On July 22, letters started arriving at Haitian households in Springfield, Ohio. They came from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and they told people to bring all of their immigration documents to an appointment at an ICE office.

On July 31, about 50 Haitians showed up at the Cincinnati ICE field office as instructed. There they were given a choice: take $2,600 to deport themselves, or put on an ankle monitor.

Every one of them turned down the money.

"Being deported to Haiti right now is a death sentence," said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance.

Two days later, on August 2, a dozen Haitians who still held Temporary Protected Status were called in and walked out wearing electronic monitors.

These are people with no criminal record

This is the part that should stop you.

An ankle monitor is normally used for an immigrant with a criminal record, an outstanding deportation order, or a missed immigration court date. The people being fitted with them in Springfield have none of those things. They had legal status. They passed background checks to get it. They paid fees to renew it.

Katie Kersh, managing attorney at Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, put it plainly:

"The people getting the ankle monitors are the people who are complying … and they're getting this thing that we connote with criminality, which is an ankle monitor, when they've literally gotten that because they followed the orders of the call-in letter."

Lynn Tramonte of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance called it what it looks like:

"It's really just theater. They're putting ankle monitors on people to make it look like they're doing something, but it's devastating for the people who are getting these placed on their ankle. They're a constant reminder that you're not free."

ICE did not respond to a detailed list of questions from States Newsroom about the practice.

It appears to be happening in Springfield and nowhere else

Reporters checked. Advocates and immigration lawyers in Boston, Chicago and Miami — all cities with large Haitian populations — have not seen this tactic. One advocate reported more federal agents around Brooklyn's Little Haiti, but no check-ins.

Six advocates and attorneys said the electronic monitoring appears to be happening only in Springfield.

Springfield is home to about 15,000 Haitian immigrants. It is also the town Donald Trump made famous in September 2024 when he falsely accused Haitians there of eating people's pets, and promised to strip their legal protections so he could deport them.

Two years later, ICE is bolting monitors to their ankles in that specific town. Kersh said an ICE officer told her the order came from above: "we are being told from headquarters that we have to ankle monitor them specifically."

The rollout was a mess

The attorneys describe check-in appointments that were disorganized in ways that would be funny if the stakes were lower.

• Officers pulled out brand-new ankle monitors that hadn't been charged.
• Instructions were provided only in English and Spanish. Most Haitians' first language is Creole. No translator was present, so Kersh brought one herself.
• A woman who works night shifts explained she wouldn't be able to charge the device. An officer told her "to just charge it while you're sleeping." She told him again that she works nights.
• Kersh asked about alternatives — a daily facial-recognition check-in, a wrist monitor. Officials refused to deviate.

Then there's the geography problem. The monitors have a 75-mile radius. Ohio's only immigration court is in Cleveland, 188 miles from Springfield. So a Haitian ordered to appear in court now has to ask an ICE officer for permission to attend their own hearing.

"It just sort of feels like the wheels are off the bus," Kersh said.

Even getting to the ICE appointments was hard, because Ohio legislators passed a law tying a valid driver's license to immigration status — so as their status lapsed, so did their ability to legally drive to the appointment ICE ordered them to attend.

The people fitted with monitors were told to come back in several weeks. They were given no information about what happens then.

What changed, and how fast

The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in June that the administration could end TPS for as many as 350,000 Haitians. We wrote about that decision and the dissent that laid out, quote by quote, the racial animus behind the policy. The case went back to a lower court in Washington, which is still litigating exactly that question — whether ending protections for Haitians was motivated by racial animus.

Last Wednesday, a federal judge lifted a stay that had been blocking the termination since February.

The same day, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin went on NewsNation and said the department was "going after (Haitians) right now."

"We are giving them an opportunity to either leave on their own and we'll help you, or we'll arrest you and send you back. Either way, you don't have status inside this country anymore."

The speed is the point. Geoffrey Pipoly, the attorney who argued the Haitian TPS case at the Supreme Court, drew the contrast with Trump's first term, when the administration at least tried to give people a wind-down period:

"We went from the first Trump administration giving these folks 18 months to get their affairs in order to now, their position is: We're not even going to give you 32 days from the final judgment of the Supreme Court … as soon as the earliest possible time that we are legally allowed to start deporting people, that's what we're going to start doing."

Lower courts normally get 32 days to implement a Supreme Court ruling. For the June decision, that would have meant July 27. ICE's letters to Springfield Haitians were dated July 22 — five days before the government was even supposed to be able to act.

"They really, really, really, really want to target these people," Pipoly said.

What these people actually are

Temporary Protected Status was created by Congress in the 1990s for people from countries too dangerous to return to. Haiti first got it in 2010, after the earthquake. President Biden extended it in 2021 after Haiti's president was assassinated.

To hold it, you have to pass a background check and pay application fees every renewal cycle. It gives you no path to citizenship. It just lets you live and work here legally.

Of the roughly 350,000 Haitians with TPS, about 200,000 are in the workforce, according to FWD.us — in healthcare, retail, agriculture and manufacturing. Those are hospital aides, meatpacking workers, farm hands and warehouse staff, many of them in Ohio.

And the country they're being sent back to? The State Department's own advisory for Haiti is "Do Not Travel" — "due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care."

The federal government is telling Americans it is too dangerous to set foot in Haiti while deporting Haitians there.

Ohio Republicans knew, and cheered

None of this happened quietly. Ohio's own congressional Republicans have been vocal supporters. Rep. Michael Rulli went on Fox News after the Supreme Court ruling to celebrate the mass deportation of Ohio's Haitians — "Let's get 'em all out of here".

The people wearing monitors in Springfield right now are the ones who did everything they were asked. They registered. They paid. They passed the checks. When a letter arrived telling them to report to a government office, they went.

That is what got them the ankle monitor.

Source

• Some Haitians targeted for ankle monitors by ICE as they face threat of mass deportation — Ariana Figueroa, States Newsroom / Ohio Capital Journal, August 10, 2026. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.