Federal immigration agents are planning operations to arrest and deport Haitian migrants in Ohio and elsewhere, according to internal documents and agency sources, a move that follows the Supreme Court clearing the Trump administration to end TPS protections for more than 300,000 Haitians.
ICE has drawn up plans to target large Haitian communities, including in Springfield, Ohio, and to place those arrested on deportation flights to Haiti, two agency sources and federal documents obtained by CBS News indicate. The operations could begin as soon as this week, though the full scale of the planned effort remains unclear.
The timing is no accident. The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration last month in its push to end TPS programs for Haitians and Syrians, finding that federal law bars judges from reviewing TPS determinations. The court's binding mandate is set to be issued to lower courts on Monday, removing the last legal barrier that had kept the protections in place.
Once that mandate takes effect, more than 300,000 Haitians currently enrolled in TPS will lose both their protected status and their work permits. Without those protections, they become eligible for arrest and deportation processing. Those who do not already have a removal order are still entitled to appear before an immigration judge before being deported.
Temporary Protected Status was established by Congress in 1990 as a short-term humanitarian measure for foreign nationals whose home countries were hit by natural disasters, armed conflict, or other extraordinary conditions. Haiti's version of the program has been in place since 2010, when a devastating earthquake leveled much of the country.
Fifteen years later, the "temporary" label has worn thin. The Trump administration has argued that successive administrations used TPS as a "defacto amnesty program," extending protections indefinitely rather than requiring recipients to return home when conditions allowed. DHS moved to end Haiti's TPS designation last year, but the decision was tied up in court until the Supreme Court intervened.
A Biden-era White House memo previously laid the groundwork to shield millions of noncitizens from deportation through expanded TPS designations, a policy approach the current administration has worked to reverse.
In February, U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes ruled that the administration's move to end Haiti's TPS was rooted "in part" in "racial animus," citing disparaging remarks by then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and President Trump about Haiti and immigrants. But the Supreme Court majority disagreed, finding Trump's comments were not "overtly racial" and that the executive branch held the authority to make TPS determinations without judicial second-guessing.
That ruling cleared the Trump administration to end TPS protections for both Haitians and Syrians, settling a legal fight that had dragged on for months.
The Department of Homeland Security declined to discuss specifics of future operations when asked by CBS News. But its public posture left little room for ambiguity.
In a statement, DHS told CBS News:
"What we would say now is it's closing time which means you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."
The agency also pointed to a self-deportation incentive, telling CBS News: "The good news is it's not too late to get a $2,600 check and a free flight home." The offer frames the choice in stark terms: leave voluntarily with cash in hand, or face arrest and removal.
The administration has not limited its TPS rollback to Haitians. It has terminated or moved to end TPS programs for immigrants from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and other countries. Lower courts have continued to resist some of those terminations, though the Supreme Court's recent ruling significantly narrowed the legal ground available to challengers.
Springfield became a flashpoint during the 2024 presidential campaign when President Trump amplified claims that Haitians in the city were eating cats and dogs. The city's Haitian community had grown rapidly, straining local services and drawing national attention to the broader question of how TPS populations affect small American towns.
Now Springfield appears again in ICE's operational planning. Internal documents reference Ohio, including Springfield, as a target for arrest operations. For the American residents of Springfield who raised concerns about rapid demographic change and its effects on housing, schools, and public services, the planned enforcement may look like a long-overdue response. For the Haitian families who settled there under legal protections they believed would last, it represents an abrupt reversal.
Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, a nonprofit that assists Haitian migrants, described the mood in Haitian communities to CBS News:
"Once again our community members find themselves in a state of extreme trauma, fear and terror. One of them told me it feels like a tsunami or an earthquake with nonstop aftershocks."
Jozef added that the fear extends to children. "Her little girl doesn't even want to go to school for fear of coming home and not finding her mother," she said.
Congressional Democrats have publicly objected to the Supreme Court's TPS ruling and the enforcement actions it enables, though their objections carry no legal force now that the high court has spoken.
The planned Haitian operations come amid a broader ICE enforcement surge. The agency has ramped up operations this summer under pressure to record 2,000 daily arrests. Last month, the number of detainees booked into ICE custody hit a monthly record high for the second Trump administration.
That pace has not come without cost. In January, two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed by federal agents during a massive deployment to the Minneapolis area. The administration subsequently scaled back large-scale immigration roundups in the wake of those deaths.
Last month, two immigrants, one from Mexico and one from Colombia, were killed by agents during traffic stops in Texas and Maine as part of the ICE surge. Those incidents prompted the agency to adopt new body-camera requirements for vehicle stops.
The deaths raise legitimate operational questions. Aggressive enforcement is necessary to restore order after years of lax border policy, but federal agents must carry out that mission without endangering the American citizens they are sworn to protect. The administration appears to recognize this, given its decision to pull back after the Minneapolis-area incidents and to impose new accountability measures on vehicle stops.
Haiti remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Significant portions of the country are controlled by criminal gangs. The U.S. State Department urges Americans not to visit Haiti under any circumstances, citing rampant violence.
The security situation is so dire that the U.S. has generally limited deportation flights to Cap-Haïtien, a city in northern Haiti, because the capital, Port-au-Prince, is considered too unstable and insecure to receive flights safely. The administration has also terminated programs that previously allowed Haitians and other immigrants to enter the U.S. legally, narrowing the pathways available to those who might seek to return.
None of that changes the legal reality. The Supreme Court has ruled. The TPS program for Haitians is ending. And ICE now has both the legal authority and the operational plans to enforce that outcome.
The question was never whether "temporary" protections should last forever, Congress wrote the word "temporary" into the statute for a reason. The question is whether the government has the will to enforce what the law actually says. For the first time in fifteen years, the answer appears to be yes.
