Former President Donald Trump has promised to revoke the legal immigration status of Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, and deport them back to Haiti if he returns to the White House.
Trump and 2024 running mate Senator JD Vance have repeatedly pushed evidence-free claims that Haitian migrants in Springfield, the bulk of whom are legally in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), have been abducting and eating pet cats and dogs.
Despite Haitians in Springfield receiving death threats—and Trump facing pushback over the false pet-eating claims from figures including Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine—the former president has doubled down on his claims and continued to denounce the migrants.
In a new interview with NewsNation reporter Ali Bradley on Wednesday, Trump said that he was planning to effectively make the legal status of Haitian migrants in Springfield become illegal in order to deport them if he wins November’s presidential election.
Michael M. Santiago
“Springfield is such a beautiful place, have you seen what’s happened to it?” Trump said. “It’s been overrun. You can’t do that to people. They have to be removed.”
“Absolutely I’d revoke [TPS],” he continued. “And I’d bring ’em back to their country.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, criticized Trump’s plans in a post to X, formerly Twitter.
“By January, there may be as many as 250,000 Haitians or more who have TPS, about 60,000 of whom have had TPS since the 2010 earthquake,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote.
“TPS is for countries undergoing circumstances that make it inhumane and dangerous to deport people there. If Haiti doesn’t count, what does?” he continued.
It was unclear whether Trump planned to revoke TPS for all legal Haitian migrants, or just those in Springfield, a city that has been in the spotlight since the former president’s September 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Newsweek reached out for comment to Trump’s office via email on Wednesday night.
Days after his debate with Harris, Trump pledged to enact “the largest deportation in the history of our country,” which he said would begin in Springfield and Aurora, Colorado.
The former president has claimed that Venezuelan gangs have “taken over” the Colorado city, despite city officials including the police chief rejecting the claims.
After announcing that he would begin the mass deportations by removing migrants from Springfield and Aurora, Trump said that the migrants would all be sent “back to Venezuela.”
Legal experts have expressed doubts about Trump having the ability to deport legal immigrants even if he does win a second term, likely making his plan to revoke TPS essential for the Springfield deportations to occur.
“In general, deportation is for people who lack immigration status,” Stephen Yale-Loehr, immigration law professor at Cornell Law School, previously told Newsweek.
“People here on parole or temporary protected status have a status, so they shouldn’t be put into deportation proceedings unless a separate ground of deportability (e.g., a criminal conviction) applies to them,” he added.