Church-supervised hubs to house and care for children separated from their parents. Phone chains to activate citizen networks if federal immigration agents are spotted in the community. Volunteers to deliver food to hungry neighbors from their own cars instead of food pantry trucks. Training on what to do if agents breach one of the churches planning to provide sanctuary to immigrant families.
These are just some of the preparations that residents of Springfield, Ohio, have made in recent days as the country barrels toward the end of an immigration program that has allowed some 330,000 Haitians to legally live and work in the United States because of the rampant violence and political volatility in Haiti. Though conditions there have not improved — and perhaps only worsened — Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, ends for Haitians on February 3. There are as many as 15,000 immigrants in the Springfield area, many of them Haitian, and the city of about 60,000 is ramping up efforts to try to protect their community from the type of chaotic, violent assault by federal immigration agents that claimed two lives in Minneapolis in recent weeks.
“The fear is turned up as high as it can go in the community,” said Marjory Wentworth, a poet and member of the faith-based coalition G92, which formed last year to support Springfield’s Haitian community.
Top of mind for the largely faith-based constellation of groups and coalitions are thousands of Haitian and Haitian-American children in Springfield who are in danger of being separated from their parents if ICE begins either targeted or large-scale enforcement actions. The Catholic charity St. Vincent de Paul has spent the past eight months urging the Haitian parents who come into their community center to get U.S. passports for their American-born children in case they need to self-deport to Haiti or a third country. There have also been efforts to get kinship care and guardianship arrangements in place in the event of worst-case family separation scenarios.
Many Haitians in Springfield are still praying for a last-minute reprieve from the courts. There are two cases before federal judges that challenge the Trump administration’s decision to end TPS for Haitians given the conditions in their home country — one is expected to rule before the TPS end date. But the Springfield network that has supported Haitians there is moving forward with preparations for what more than one referred to as a potential “siege” by ICE, since the administration might appeal the ruling — or ignore it altogether.
“It has felt for a long time like we’re facing a train coming down the tracks toward us,” said Pastor Carl Ruby, whose congregation has been vocal in their support for Haitians.
(Jessie Wardarski/AP)
Late last week, word came from the office of Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine that it was time to “activate the churches,” as one leader of a faith-based organization put it — in other words, to prepare to provide emergency care and short-term housing to children separated from their parents. Amy Willmann at the Nehemiah Foundation, a local group named for a biblical figure said to have restored Jerusalem, was tapped as the point person. She said their network has 28 churches and 114 volunteers who have already completed background checks. These volunteers will staff “hubs” where children can go if they arrive home from school to an empty house or are taken in by child services once a parent is picked up by ICE. DeWine, a term-limited Republican in his final year in office, has pledged additional support from the state.
Willmann said a top priority is getting the word out to Haitian parents that these volunteers are not looking to adopt their children, they simply want to make sure they are safe during a potentially volatile situation.
“We want you to know they have a safe place to be until they’re reunified with you. We know that some of [the parents] will self deport and take their children with them, some of them will take their children with them into detention. But we also know that some 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 held a rapid-response training that drew nearly 200 to a local church. Though it was initially designed to be the final in a series, there were so many new faces that organizers decided to make it more of an all-hands-on-deck overview. As G92 member and social worker Jill Potter-Bonsell put it: “The demographic of these people is changing, more and more everyday people that wouldn’t normally be involved in this type of stuff are concerned and feel morally obligated to do something.”
Participants learned about their First Amendment rights and about the newly elevated risk of exercising them. They acted out potential scenarios community members may encounter as they face Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents on their streets — and in their churches. On President Donald Trump’s first day back in office, his administration ended a policy that protected churches, schools and hospitals from immigration enforcement. As actors playing ICE agents busted through the church sanctuary door, some participants took out their cell phones to start recording. A woman in a wheelchair did circles in the aisle to complicate the agents’ path. More than a few dropped to their knees and began to pray.
“Most of it took place in our sanctuary — no pun intended,” said Ruby, whose church hosted the training. “We tried to distill everything that we’ve learned over the last year into one training session that was very specifically focused on what could happen in Springfield in the next couple of weeks.”
Hanging over the training was the recent death of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of federal immigration agents in Minneapolis — organizers emphasized personal safety considerations and their commitment to nonviolent resistance, grounded in their belief that “as Christians, we are called to push back against injustice,” Ruby said. Halfway through, Ruby got word that federal immigration agents had shot Alex Pretti and announced it to the group. As participants prepared to break for the day, they got the news that the 37-year-old ICU nurse had died.
“It was very sobering, because when I watched what happened with Renee Good, I realized this could happen to some of the people who we’ve trained, because we’ve trained people to videotape what they’re seeing, and they could be doing the very same things and be shot and killed by ICE,” Ruby said.
Many Springfield residents preparing for the end of TPS and what could follow said it is giving them flashbacks to 2024, when lies about Haitians on social media were amplified by Trump and Vice President JD Vance, and when white nationalist groups descended on their city. Misinformation “spread like wildfire” then, said Jen Casto, a G92 member and community activist. In recent days, she has heard that ICE enforcement would begin on January 28, then that it will begin on February 3 and last 30 days; she has heard that 1,500 federal agents are being deployed to the city, then that they have a high-priority list of 300 people first in line for deportation. Really, no one knows what to expect, so they’re trying to prepare for everything, Casto said.
“It takes me back to that, in a way, but at a different level,” Casto said of today versus what her community confronted in 2024. “But now, I don’t think we’re so much worried about hate groups coming here like we had in the past … I think a lot of what the feeling is right now is a fear that ICE or other federal entities are going to come in here and just destroy our community.”
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