The desperate drive to secure passports for thousands of US-born Haitian kids – before it's too late

The Guardian

2 days ago

Inside a church a few blocks south of downtown Springfield, Ohio, about 30 concerned Haitians, church leaders and community members have gathered on a balmy summer evening to try to map out a plan.
It's been just a few days since Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, announced that Haitian nationals with temporary protected status (TPS) would face termination proceedings in a matter of months. By 2 September, they would be forced out of the US.
On 1 July, a federal judge in New York blocked the Department of Homeland Security's attempt to end TPS for Haitian nationals. However, that's done little to alleviate the growing sense of fear: in May the supreme court sided with the Trump administration in a similar case, lifting a ruling that had previously prevented 350,000 Venezuelans on TPS from being forced to leave the country.
From pew to pew inside the church, booklets containing advice to help prepare families for raids and immigration enforcement actions are passed around. Three immigration law advocates from a local firm are bombarded with questions such as what to do when in the presence of suspected Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers.
Among the group is a small number of charity volunteers working to avoid a potential humanitarian disaster: that thousands of US-born Haitian children could become stateless, or separated from their families.
'In the last several months we realized that the closer we got to the deportations and revocation of statuses meant that all these people who have babies … if they don't have passports for their children, how are they going to take them out of the country with them?' says Casey Rollins, a volunteer at the local St Vincent de Paul chapter.
'All you have to look at is the previous [Trump] administration.' A Reuters report from 2023 found that nearly 1,000 children separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border in 2017 and 2018 had never been reunited.
Springfield is home to about 1,217 and counting American-born Haitian children under the age of four, with several thousand more dependants under the age of 18. While the number of adults in the Ohio town of 60,000 people legally in the country on TPS is not known, local leaders estimate 10,000 to 15,000 Haitian nationals have come to Springfield, drawn by employment opportunities, since 2017. In April, data provided by the Springfield city school district to the Springfield News-Sun found that the district had 1,258 students enrolled as English language learners in K-12 schools, though that doesn't mean all are children of Haitian descent.
For three months, Rollins, volunteers at Springfield Neighbors United and others have been working with dozens of Haitians who turn up at charity organizations seeking advice and help every day. One of the most requested issues from parents, Rollins says, is figuring out how to apply for birth certificates for their children, before it's too late.
'If we can't stop the deportations, we want to help get them a passport. That way, if they are deported or go to Canada or another welcoming nation, they'd be able to take the child,' she says.
'If it takes three or four months [to complete the bureaucratic process from securing a birth certificate to acquiring a passport], we have got to get moving on this.'
With no prepared and notarized family plan or custodial arrangements in place, vulnerable children could be at risk of being placed in custody as dependants of the state and then being placed with foster families indefinitely. Adding further angst for Haitians is the supreme court's ruling on 27 June limiting injunctions nationwide against the Trump administration's efforts to end birthright citizenship.
The humanitarian and security situation in Haiti has been dire for more than a decade.
Due to the longstanding war-like conditions prevalent there, successive administrations had been extending TPS for Haitians in the US since 2010.
However, based on a recent review by US Citizenship and Immigration Services in consultation with the Department of State: 'The environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home,' a homeland security spokesperson claimed on 27 June, when the decision to end TPS for the more than 500,000 Haitian nationals in the US was announced.
That's despite the state department posting a 'Do not travel' status update for Haiti that has been in place since last year that finds: 'Since March 2024, Haiti has been under a State of Emergency. Crimes involving firearms are common in Haiti. They include robbery, carjackings, sexual assault, and kidnappings for ransom.'
Commercial flights to Haiti's main international airport in Port-au-Prince have been halted due to the adverse security situation. Members of the Haitian community in Springfield say that flying people to regional airports would leave them open to attacks.
'It's an illusion for people to say that Haiti is safe now. There's over a million Haitians internally displaced. People living in shelters without water and food. They've been displaced by the violence. Even the US embassy cannot operate properly,' says Viles Dorsainvil, the executive director of the Haitian Community Help & Support Center in Springfield.
'They are not here because they want to be here, but because the situation pushed them away. I don't understand why the Department of Homeland Security says the situation has improved. It's just not true.'
Experts say the likelihood of a repeat of the scenes that saw families pulled apart and children held in cages at the southern border, as happened during the first Trump administration, is low. However, the potential alternatives are not much more comforting.
'Haitians have entered lawfully. But if the administration follows through with its threats to put people who entered lawfully in expedited removal, that would subject many Haitians to mandatory detention,' says Katie Kersh, managing attorney for the non-profit Advocates for Basic Legal Equality.
'If they have US citizen children, that would result in separation, and I don't think that we are equipped to handle all of those children. We don't have many family detention facilities.'
In April, the Clark County Combined Health District estimated that approximately 10,000 Haitians were residing in Springfield. Prior reports suggested some Haitians had left the Ohio city for Canada and elsewhere following the election of Donald Trump in November. Last month, Springfield's Republican mayor, Rob Rue, lamented that Trump 'can't keep our city out of his mouth'.
The volunteers have only completed a handful of passport applications so far, having been awaiting the supreme court ruling on birthright citizenship on 27 June. But they are crippled by fear.
'It's a double-edged sword,' says Rollins of the effort they are trying to get going.
'If we do nothing, that's bad. But we are terrified that it could be shut down by the administration.'