Immigration enforcement in Springfield is on hold until the Supreme Court’s decision

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents likely won’t target Haitians in Springfield and elsewhere until the Supreme Court rules on whether the Trump administration’s decision to cancel their Temporary Protected Status was lawful.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday in a new legal filing to reverse multiple district court rulings preventing the termination of TPS for several countries, including Haiti, Syria, South Sudan, and Myanmar, according to the Springfield News-Sun.

Noem said that there are no “extraordinary and temporary conditions” preventing Haitian citizens from returning to their homeland, even though the federal government previously warned American citizens not to travel to Haiti because it is too dangerous.

The recent action by Noem follows a ruling by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., denying the Trump administration’s attempt to deport Haitians by canceling their TPS, according to Ideastream Public Media.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes issued a ruling in which she wrote that the current administration was not able to provide evidence of how keeping more than 300,000 Haitian refugees inside the country would cause irreparable harm to the government, the news source reported. As a result of the federal government failing to do that, Reyes said that Haitian TPS holders will maintain their status for now, adding that they will be able to continue working, maintaining their health insurance, and paying federal, state, and local taxes.

Meanwhile, a senior Department of Homeland Security official reassured Americans on Wednesday by saying that ICE officers will not be present at polling places during this year’s elections, according to another report by Ideastream Public Media.

“Any suggestion that ICE is going to be present at polling places is simply disinformation,” Heather Honey, DHS assistant secretary for election integrity, said. “There will be no ICE presence at polling locations.”

Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams also wrote on X that ICE will not be present at the polling places.

These comments came after Trump allegedly suggested that the Republican Party should nationalize elections and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said that ICE will “surround the polls come November,” according to NPR and Politico. When one of the reporters asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt about Bannon’s comments, she said that she “can’t guarantee” that an ICE agent wouldn’t be around polling locations, according to PBS News.

Trump also allegedly said that he will not be sending ICE agents for immigration enforcement purposes if the state and local authorities do not want the agents there, according to the Ohio Capital Journal.

If it is indeed the case, it is highly unlikely that Republican Gov. Mike DeWine would allow ICE agents to deport Haitian immigrants, since he previously defended them, saying that “the policy to revoke” their TPS is “wrong,” The Columbus Dispatch reported.

“I don’t think there’s a consensus for taking people who are working, who are supporting their family, and we’ve kind of seen it, almost in a micro way, with the Haitian community that’s come into Springfield,” he said. “Springfield is an industrial city, a manufacturing city that was down. It has been coming back. And frankly, one of the reasons it’s coming back is because of the Haitians who are working there.”

Local authorities, especially those in Columbus, would also oppose the presence of ICE agents, given that they recently passed laws aimed at making ICE officers’ jobs harder, according to another report by The Columbus Dispatch.