The desperate drive to secure passports for thousands of US-born Haitian kids – before it’s too late | US news

Inside a church with a few blocks in the south of the city center of Springfield, Ohio, around thirty Haitians concerned, church leaders and community members gathered by a sweet summer evening to try to map a plan.

This only has a few days that Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Internal Security, announced that Haitian nationals with temporary protected status (TPS) will be faced with dismissal procedures in a few months. On September 2, they would be forced to leave the United States.

On July 1, a New York Federal Judge blocked the attempt by the Ministry of Internal Security to put an end to PLS for Haitian nationals. However, that did not do much to alleviate the growing feeling of fear: in May, the Supreme Court reassured itself with the Trump administration in a similar case, raising a decision which had previously prevented 350,000 venezuelans on the TPS from being forced to leave the country.

From Pew to Pew inside the church, booklets containing advice to help prepare families for raids and immigration implementation measures are transmitted. Three defenders of the immigration law of a local office are bombed with questions such as what to do in the presence of alleged immigration and customs application (ICE) officers.

Among the group is a small number of charity volunteers who work to avoid a potential humanitarian disaster: thousands of Haitian children born in the United States could become stateless or separated from their families.

“In the past few months, we have realized that the more we get closer to the deportations and the revocation of the statutes meant that all these people who have babies … If they do not have a passport for their children, how are they going to get them out of the country with them?” said Casey Rollins, volunteer in the local chapter of St Vincent de Paul.

“Everything you have to watch is the previous one [Trump] Administration. “A 2023 Reuters report revealed that nearly 1,000 children separated from their parents at the American-Mexican border in 2017 and 2018 had never been gathered.

Springfield is home to approximately 1,217 and with Haitian children of American origin under the age of four, with several thousand people under 18 years old. Although the number of adults in the city of Ohio of 60,000 people legally in the country on Springfield is not known by the Spring on the ground, since 2017. The district had 1,258 students registered as learners in English in the schools from kindergarten to 12th year, although this does not mean that all are children of Haitian origin.

For three months, Rollins, volunteers from Springfield Neighbors United and others work with dozens of Haitians who present themselves in charitable organizations looking for advice and help every day. One of the most requested problems for parents, says Rollins, is to find out how to ask for birth certificates for their children, before it is too late.

“If we cannot stop the deportations, we want to help them get a passport. In this way, if they are expelled or go to Canada or another welcoming nation, they could take the child, “she said.

“If it takes three or four months [to complete the bureaucratic process from securing a birth certificate to acquiring a passport]We must continue to move forward. »»

Without the family plan or the prepared and notarial family arrangements in place, vulnerable children could risk being placed in police custody as a state dependent, then being placed with host families indefinitely. The addition of additional anxiety for Haitians is the decision of the Supreme Court on June 27, limiting the injunctions nationally against the efforts of the Trump administration to end the citizenship of the dawn.

The humanitarian and security situation in Haiti has been disastrous for more than a decade.

Due to the long-standing conditions of the prevailing war, successive administrations have extended TP for Haitians in the United States since 2010.

However, on the basis of a recent examination of the United States citizenship and immigration services in consultation with the State Department: “The environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough to be sure for Haitian citizens to return home,,“A spokesperson for internal security said on June 27, when the decision to put an end to PT for more than 500,000 Haitian nationals in the United States has been announced.

It is despite the State Department which publishes an update of “not traveling” status for Haiti who has been in place since last year who finds: “Since March 2024, Haiti has been under the state of emergency. Crimes involving firearms are common in Haiti.

Commercial flights to Haiti’s main international airport in Port-au-Prince were interrupted due to the unfavorable security situation. Members of the Haitian community of Springfield say that flying people to regional airports would leave them open to attacks.

“It’s an illusion for people to say that Haiti is safe now. There are over a million Haitians moved inside.

“They are not here because they want to be here, but because the situation has rejected them. I do not understand why the Ministry of Homeland Security says that the situation has improved. It is simply not true.”

Experts say that the probability of a rehearsal of the scenes that have seen families separated and the children held in cages on the southern border, as happened during the first Trump administration, is low. However, potential alternatives are not much more comforting.

“The Haitians have legally entered. But if the administration follows its threats to put people who have legally entered accelerated moving, this would submit many Haitians to compulsory detention, “explains Katie Kersh, managing the lawyer for non -profit defenders for fundamental legal equality.

“If they have children American citizens, it would lead to separation, and I don’t think we are equipped to manage all these children. We do not have many family detention facilities. ”

In April, Clark County Combined Health District estimated that around 10,000 Haitians resided in Springfield. Previous reports suggested that some Haitians had left Ohio City for Canada and elsewhere after the election of Donald Trump in November. Last month, the republican mayor of Springfield, Rob rue, deplored that Trump “cannot keep our city out of his mouth”.

Until now, volunteers have completed only a handful of passport requests, after waiting for the Supreme Court’s decision on the citizenship of the birth law on June 27. But they are paralyzed by fear.

“It is a double -edged sword,” explains Rollins about the effort they are trying to start.

“If we do nothing, it’s bad. But we are terrified that it can be closed by the administration. ”