This MAGA Ohio Town Could Soon Face the Mother of All ICE Raids

Is Springfield, Ohio—home of the Haitian community that Trump and Vance brazenly lied about in 2024—about to become the next Minneapolis?

Stephen Miller is very, very excited about the Supreme Court’s big ruling Thursday allowing Donald Trump to summarily end protections from deportation for hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in the United States. After the decision came down, Miller enthused: “We can finally remove these Haitian illegal migrants.”

If we take Miller at his word, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is about to hit a Trump-backing county in red Ohio with a big, disruptive operation. Around 12,000 to 15,000 Haitian immigrants live in the area in and around Springfield, a small Rust Belt city in Clark County, which Trump won in 2024 by 30 points. Many enjoy Temporary Protected Status, which grants protections to people from dangerous, crisis-ridden countries—status that Trump has scrapped. Now that the high court has sided with Trump, many will be subject to immediate deportation.

The name “Springfield” might jog your memory a bit. During the 2024 campaign, Trump and JD Vance targeted Springfield when they pushed the vile smear that Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pets. The Trump-Vance demagoguery unleashed searing social tensions in this postindustrial Midwestern city, and it temporarily became the center of our political universe before other controversies intervened.

Now, however, Springfield has taken on an overlooked role in the Supreme Court’s new ruling. The case involves Trump’s 2025 decision to end TPS for around 330,000 Haitians nationally and a smaller number of Syrians. Plaintiffs sued, arguing in part that race drove the decision. Exhibit A was Trump’s language about Haitians in Springfield, such as his claim that they are “eating the dogs”........

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