For Springfield’s Haitians, Ankle Monitors and Fear of Going to Church

A check-in with a Haitian pastor in the Ohio town smeared by right-wing lies in 2024 reveals that all is far from well.

Father Fritz sounded glum, and tired, as well he should have been. A native of Haiti and a naturalized U.S. citizen, Fritz—properly, the Reverend Fritzner Valcin—has been driving a little more than an hour west to Springfield, Ohio, every Sunday for the past few years from his home near Buckeye Lake to celebrate Mass with his Haitian flock at St. Raphael Church.

A year earlier, he had almost 100 in attendance on a typical Sunday. But by August 23, the size of Father Fritz’s flock had dwindled to no more than four Haitian worshippers (and two babies), including the organist.

In that time many things had changed, and not for the better. The Supreme Court’s decision in June effectively ended Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. More than 10,000 Haitians in the Springfield area—a city with a population of fewer than 60,000—who had been working and paying taxes on one day became illegal to employ and subject to deportation the next day.

Since the end of TPS, many Haitians in Springfield received letters to report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in the Cincinnati suburb of Blue Ash or the Columbus suburb of Westerville—both an hour away from Springfield—where they were given ankle monitors and told not to travel beyond a 75-mile radius of their........

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