Letter to Sherrod Brown, Jon Husted, Greg Levy, Bernie Moreno, Emilia Sykes, and Mike DeWine Regarding Temporary Protected Status for Haitians

To our elected officials and the candidates seeking to fill those roles,

It is with the deepest frustration and pain in our hearts that we write to you today, as over 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians are now at risk of brutal deportations towards countries that even our own State Department advises against travel to. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has ruled in favor of the early termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for these populations, despite the weak legal basis for doing so. Now, Haitians and Syrians across the country are living in profound fear and insecurity as their already limited access to their communities and an income is quickly dwindling away.

This disaster will be felt sharply within our beautiful State as Ohio is the home of significant Haitian populations in Canton, Cleveland, Columbus, Springfield, and Youngstown. Beyond the moral indignity this treatment of migrants provokes, deportation of these populations will be a catastrophe in terms of labor and the economy. Contrary to the lie that migrants are a strain on the system, we know they contribute through labor, payroll tax and spending money throughout the state. TPS holders currently work in many important industries from hospitality to construction. In particular, Haitian TPS holders have been an important component in mitigating the nursing shortage which has been gripping the nation for years. According to research from Harvard Medical School, migrants make up nearly 20% of certified nursing assistants (CNA) within the country. These CNAs are vital to the care of millions of Americans, most notably senior populations for whom consistent and compassionate care is in desperate need. Haitian TPS holders and other foreign-born workers fill that need, and that need is only growing. To quote Harvard,

With the US’s aging population projected to surge, amending policy to allow immigrant workers to enter and stay in the US is a central concern. The study’s findings support the pressing need for comprehensive immigration reforms, acknowledging the growing demand for long-term care services and the essential role of immigrant workers in filling critical labor gaps.

As with healthcare, many TPS holders work in specialized fields for which the domestic supply of labor is already lower than demand requires, either requiring specialized training or taking place in specialized working conditions that many domestic laborers find undesirable or untenable. It must also be stated that these workers are skilled: whether they work in healthcare or hospitality, agriculture or manufacturing, these workers are often high performers and their talent makes all these industries stronger. Their labor helps make our economy run. The loss of these workers will put a greater strain on the rest of the workforce and may bring stoppages in production, service, and care across the state. This will be disastrous to both the economy and the communities impacted by this malignant ruling. Our State will also lose the millions of tax dollars that their labor generates.

Haitians within Haiti are currently living through a political, economic, health, and public safety crisis which goes far beyond what meets the eye. Flattened narratives of a generic poverty, while not untrue even if flattened, mask the material realities on the ground. It is not safe for Haitian TPS holders to return to Haiti. The US Department of State has issued travel advisories for the public and travel restrictions for government employees, acknowledging the precarity in the region. It is not even clear how Haitians living within the US could return to Haitian soil, given that the Toussaint Louverture International Airport remains inoperable and current conditions. The mass deportation of 350,000 Haitians, a figure roughly matching the population of Cleveland and nearly the population of Cap-Haïtian itself, will only further exacerbate the crisis within the country.

After the assassination of Jovenel Moïse, gangs that had formed under actors such as former police officer Jimmy “Babekyou” Cherizier took over much of the country. They now control most of the nation’s capital Port-au-Prince in the West department, as well as Mirebalais in the Center department and Gonaïves in the Artibonite department. Within these regions, the transportation of basic goods has been halted, as armed forces now control much of the infrastructure in the region including highways, airports, and seaports. In Mirebalais, the gang violence has forced the closure of Lopital Inivèsite Mibalè. The loss of this hospital is horrific and represents an extreme escalation in the country’s security crisis. Furthermore, this year’s kidnapping of Maduro and the bombing of Tehran have caused gas prices in the country to soar to over $5 dollars a gallon as of 29 June. This is over a dollar higher than the current prices in Ohio for a country with a staggeringly lower GDP; Ohio’s GDP is estimated at around $967b USD while Haiti’s sits below 40b USD. This means that within Haiti, much long-distance travel is not only perilous in terms of safety, but a financial impossibility for most. This also means that goods which are able to avoid gang-controlled areas now have even higher shipping costs. The compounding insecurities felt by Haitians on the island create conditions that cause crises to self-perpetuate. In particular, experts state that the extreme food insecurity felt by many children in the country is responsible for generating much of the gang’s recruitment, half of which are child soldiers.

The food insecurity that is rampant throughout Haiti did not come about simply through Haiti’s domestic political corruption and instability but through direct economic interference by the United States. For nearly two centuries, Haiti was self-sufficient in its food supply and even produced enough rice to export the surplus until western forces like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) brought disastrous neoliberal policies to the country. In just over a decade, trade restrictions on rice that protected Haitian farmers were slashed, the rural economy was dismantled forcing Haitians to move to cities where job opportunities were insufficient, and large parts of the government were privatized. The result of these policies was the complete and total undermining of Haiti’s food sovereignty as well as the current state of super exploitation that all Haitian workers live under. Then, in 2025, well into Haiti’s imposed food dependence on the US, the short lived Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) slashed USAID’s budget. This further cut Haitians from access to food, as they are now left without large-scale suppliers or producers. As these policies were implemented then recklessly dismantled under the direction of the United States, it has been the United States that has profited immensely off of the suffering of the Haitian people. It was our farmers’ subsidized rice that diluted Haiti’s domestic markets, and it was our companies that established factories in Haiti to take advantage of wages that were kept artificially low. Through the undermining of the worker, the United States has played far more than a tangential role in the crises that Haiti faces.

Should Haitian TPS holders be repatriated en masse, resources of food and housing available within the country will have to be stretched much more thinly. Goods with already limited supply within the country will see their demand skyrocket, as will their price. Without strong, diversified industries in which to work and strong wages to match, the influx of workers trained and developed within the US will not translate to economic development and new stability for Haiti. Rather, it will increase the country’s rate of unemployment. For example, as hospitals like Lopital Inivèsite Mibalè have shuttered due to gang violence, Haitian TPS holders working as CNAs will be unable to find employment in their fields, despite the desperate need for their skills in both Haiti and the United States. In terms of security, mass arrivals in the country through the Cap-Haïtian International airport, or whatever airport would be repurposed to accomplish this repatriation, would turn the Cap-Haïtian International Airport into a major chokepoint and thus a major mark for gang control should gangs learn of the landing site(s). As we have already stated, it is these very compounding insecurities that force people into gang participation as a means of survival: we cannot give these gangs more power and opportunity for recruitment by artificially increasing the number of people living within these insecurities.

With all these considerations in mind, the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to end TPS for Haitians and the Supreme Court’s concurrence were not based on the material realities of the US or Haiti, but on pure contempt and reckless abandon. For these reasons, to let TPS expire for Haitians is unconscionable. TPS must be reinstated immediately, and thus we make the following demands:

To Bernie Moreno, we demand that you rescind your despicable and ludicrous proposal to end birthright citizenship and to reconsider your willingness to treat the lives of millions at home and abroad as playthings in authoritarian and nativist games and the disdain and disrespect you demonstrate for democracy within the United States.
To Jon Husted, we demand that you publicly disavow your fellow legislator’s proposal to revive Harry Reid’s abandoned bill and act swiftly to pass S. 4814.
To Jon Husted, Sherrod Brown, and Greg Levy, we ask that you stand with the workers that fuel our economy and, if you have not already done so, vow to uphold TPS for Haitians and migration rights for all as a core policy upon your (re)election.
To Emilia Sykes, we ask that you work with other House progressives such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, as well as organizations like the Haitian Bridge Alliance and the Haitian Community Alliance on policies that go beyond TPS’s limitations (lack of opportunity for full citizenship) and open new avenues for migrants to safely reside in the United States. We also ask that you work with these progressive congresspeople to reinstate TPS for Syrians. Furthermore, we ask that you work to limit the power of the Department of Justice to unravel the lives of hundreds of thousands of working families through ICE.
To Mike DeWine, we ask that you stand by your words and provide real material protections to Haitians in Ohio. We also ask you to remember the lives of Jean-Wilson Brutus, Marie Ange Blaise, and Daphy Michel, as well as Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and Keith Porter. The insecurity of Haitians is directly linked to the insecurity of all others living on United States soil. We thus urge you to issue an executive order to restrict state and local agencies from assisting ICE operations, as well as to declare a state of emergency to provide emergency funding to the Refugee Services department of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Finally, we ask you to speak out in favor of S. 4814 to protect Haitian lives, their families, and the communities in which they live within Ohio.

With Urgency,

Haitian Solidarity Language Group, Akron DSA,

7 July 2026.

Signatories (Updated 10 July 2026): Bowling Green DSA, Columbus DSA, Mahoning Valley DSA, Wooster DSA, Bonjour Cleveland!, Communist Party USA Akron Club, Indivisible Akron.

Citations

“Bill Clinton’s Heavy Hand on Haiti’s Vulnerable Agricultural Economy: The American Rice Scandal,” Council On Hemispheric Affairs, 13 Apr 2010, https://coha.org/haiti-research-file-neoliberalism%E2%80%99 s-heavy-hand-on-haiti%E2%80%99s-vulnerable-agricultural-economy-the-american-rice-scandal/.

Blavatnik Institute of Healthcare Policy, “Study Finds Immigrant Caregivers Essential for a Growing Population in Need of Care,” Harvard Medical School, 5 Feb 2024, https://hcp.hms.harvard.edu/news/ study- finds-immigrant-caregivers-essential-growing-population-need-care.

Caitlin Stephen Hu, “Children make up half of Haiti’s gangs. They’re about to face a new foreign force,” CNN, 6 Apr 2026, https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/06/americas/haiti-gang-children-face-new-foreign-force- latam-intl.

Daniel Dickenson, “Haitians in ‘despair’ following abrupt suspension of US humanitarian support,” United Nation News, 30 Jul 2025, https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/07/1165533.

“Gross Domestic Product: All Industry Total in Ohio,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, accessed 1 July 2026, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OHNGSP.

“Haiti Gasoline prices, liter, 29-Jun-2026, ” GlobalGasPrices.com, accessed 1 July 2026, https://www.global petrolprices.com/Haiti/gasoline_prices/.

IMF DataMapper, “Haiti,” International Monetary Fund, accessed 1 Jul 2026, https://www.imf.org/external /datamapper/profile/HTI.

Jacqueline Charles, “Gang attacks force closure of Haiti’s ‘beacon of hope’ hospital as health crisis grows,” The Miami Herald, 24 Apr 2025, https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/ haiti/ article304902171.html.

Juhakenson Blaise, “Haiti raises fuel prices, but warns against scams to drive black market sales,” The Haitian Times, 1 Apr 2026, https://haitiantimes.com/2026/04/01/haiti-fuel-price-hike-shortage- rumor-iran-war-impact/.

UN Office on Drugs and Crime, “Explainer: Organized crime and gang violence in Haiti,” United Nations, 21 Jan 2026, https://www.unodc.org/unodc/frontpage/2026/January/explainer_-organized-crime-and- gang-violence-in-haiti.html.

UN Security Council, “Letter dated 27 March 2026 from the Panel of Experts on Haiti established pursuant to Security Council resolution 2653 (2022) addressed to the President of the Security Council,” United Nations, 27 March 2026, https://docs.un.org/en/S/2026/241.