‘We spend our days in silence’: fear and repression in Ohio as ICE terrorizes Haitian immigrants

Michaelle Louis’s feet and legs are aching. She can barely walk.

Surrounded by corn fields and the distant hum of a busy highway, the native of Haiti and dozens of other activists are 23 miles into a 45-mile march from Springfield to Ohio’s statehouse in Columbus to demand better rights for Haitian immigrants.

But the pain she’s feeling now is nothing compared to the mental anguish and fear she was subjected to last summer.

In August, she spent five days huddling with her daughter and brother in the basement of her Springfield home. The family went without electricity during daylight hours out of fear that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers might come knocking on her door to deport them.

“I closed the curtains. I didn’t want anyone to know there was people living in our house,” she recalls.

“We spent our days in silence.”

For months, ICE has terrorized members of Springfield’s immigrant community, speeding after vehicles down normally placid streets and causing crashes. Chief among those being targeted are the city’s Haitian community, who began immigrating to the struggling town of 60,000 residents eight years ago to fill hundreds of open blue-collar jobs.

But a supreme court ruling allowing the Trump administration to end temporary protected status (TPS) for more than 350,000 Haitian nationals in July meant they could no longer work legally, and within days, dozens of ICE agents descended on Springfield. In September, Markwayne Mullin, the US homeland security secretary, said 380 people had been detained by ICE agents in Springfield.

Louis grew up in Haiti’s capital city Port-au-Prince, and says she came to Springfield in 2021 having entered the country legally through the southern US border. Her 31-year-old brother was murdered by a gang in Haiti in December 2018.

“I had so many threats from the gangs. I left three months after he was killed,” she recalls.

“It was very hard for my mom and dad to lose their son.”

It’s not only Haitians who feel harassed by federal immigration agents in Springfield. When ICE began patrolling city streets in August, resident Sean Moorman set about monitoring their activities and following their vehicles around town.

But that soon drew unwanted attention from arguably the most powerful federal law enforcement agency in the country today.

In a lawsuit filed on his behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio against seven ICE officers last month, Moorman claimed agents swerved one of their vehicles towards his, “as if to ram him”, took photos of his car and used several of their vehicles to corner Moorman in his car, “making him fear for his life”.

Agents also allegedly drove by and photographed his home while his wife was inside.

A billboard in Springfield, Ohio, on 24 February 2026 . Photograph: Kirk Irwin/Getty Images for Democracy for America Action Fund

Last month, a federal judge ordered ICE to stop “retaliatory action” against Moorman and granted a temporary restraining order against seven of its agents, all of whom remained unnamed.

But many of the ICE officers operating in Springfield at the time were moved out of state and the judicial order ran out on 18 September.

“It is disappointing, but unfortunately not surprising, that ICE chose to play a shell game by shuffling their officers around rather than allowing them to face accountability in court for their lawless actions,” says David Carey, managing legal director at the ACLU of Ohio and Moorman’s legal representative in the case against the ICE agents.

“We certainly disagree with the court’s decision to entertain that shell game, but the fact that the court had already entered and extended a temporary restraining order against these officers also sent the most important message: ICE does not have a blank check to violate first amendment rights.”

Moorman declined an interview with the Guardian, fearing further retaliation from ICE. His lawsuit was thrown out by a federal judge on 2 October.

ICE says it “is aware of the lawsuit filed by the ACLU in Ohio and is reviewing appropriate next steps in coordination with the Department of Justice”.

“Every day, [the Department of Homeland Security] is conducting law enforcement activities across the country to keep Americans safe,” an ICE spokesperson said.

“Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, if you break the law, you will face the consequences. Illegal aliens are not welcome in the US.”

Around the country, ICE “watchers” such as Moorman have become essential in bringing to light the agency’s dangerous and often homicidal actions in their attempts to detain immigrants.

More than two dozen people have been shot by ICE officers, many in front of their children, since the beginning of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in February 2025. Among them are three US citizens who were shot dead in Minneapolis and Texas. Two of those people, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were, like Moorman, monitoring the actions of Ice agents.

For Louis, the false statement Trump made during his presidential election campaign in September 2024 about immigrants in Springfield eating people’s pets hurt her the most.

“That opened my eyes. Until then, all I did was go to work and come home. I wasn’t that interested in community issues. I was helping people – Americans facing domestic violence. I served the nation; I served citizens,” she says.

Millions of immigrants from dozens of countries around the world have lost their ability to work legally in the US under the Trump administration. According to the Migration Policy Institute, ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have deported 980,000 people since the beginning of Trump’s second stint in office.

“And when you say I’m eating dogs and cats and I’m coming illegally, that’s something that’s shaken me. I was sleeping and now I woke up for my community.”

Louis says the three-day march across Ohio is to raise awareness for activists’ demands to end ICE’s detention of and use of ankle monitors on immigrants, for its agents to leave Springfield and for authorities to establish a permanent residency pathway for Haitians who have contributed to life in the US.

On day two of the march, as a large Amazon warehouse where dozens of Haitians were employed before the Trump crackdown comes into view, Louis talks about a Haitian woman she knows whose husband was recently deported to Haiti, where violence and political unrest has reigned for more than a decade.

“They had bought a house here [but] now they are moving back to Haiti,” she says.

“I think this is a method by ICE – take the man and the family will follow.”