Michaelle Louis is 23 miles into a 45-mile march from Springfield to Ohio’s statehouse in Columbus, her aching feet carrying a burden born of months of targeted fear. Alongside dozens of other activists, the native of Haiti is demanding better rights for Haitian immigrants.
The Summer of Silence Behind Closed Curtains
That physical pain on the highway mirrors a deep mental anguish she endured last summer. In August, Louis spent five days huddling in the basement of her Springfield home alongside her daughter and brother, deliberately cutting off electricity during daylight hours to avoid drawing the attention of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
“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, federal immigration agents have maintained a heavy presence in Springfield, a town of 60,000 residents that began welcoming Haitian immigrants eight years ago to fill hundreds of open blue-collar jobs. That stability changed in July when a supreme court ruling allowed the Trump administration to end temporary protected status (TPS) for more than 350,000 Haitian nationals, meaning they could no longer work legally, and within days, dozens of ICE agents descended on Springfield.
A Community Targeted and Patrolled
The sudden policy shift brought dozens of ICE agents to the streets of Springfield. US homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin reported in September that ICE personnel had taken 380 individuals into custody in Springfield.
For Louis, the hostility traces back even further. She arrived in Springfield in 2021 after entering the country legally through the southern US border, fleeing Port-au-Prince following the December 2018 gang murder of her 31-year-old brother and subsequent threats against her own life. The climate of fear intensified in September 2024, when Trump made a false statement during his presidential election campaign about immigrants in Springfield eating people’s pets.
“That opened my eyes. Until then, all I did was go to work and come home. I was sleeping and now I woke up for my community.”
Legal Confrontations and Surveillance on Local Streets
The federal crackdown has drawn pushback not only from immigrants but also from local residents who began monitoring enforcement tactics. When ICE began patrolling city streets in August, Springfield resident Sean Moorman set about monitoring their activities and following their vehicles around town.
That surveillance led to direct conflict with federal personnel. Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio filed a lawsuit on his behalf against seven ICE officers, in which Moorman alleged that agents maneuvered one of their vehicles toward his, “as if to ram him”, photographed his automobile, and boxed him in using multiple vehicles, “making him fear for his life”. Agents also allegedly drove by and photographed his home while his wife was inside.
Although a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order against seven of its agents, the judicial order ran out on 18 September. David Carey, managing legal director at the ACLU of Ohio, criticized the agency’s response as a shell game to evade accountability, though he emphasized that the judicial intervention proved ICE does not have a blank check to violate first amendment rights. Moorman declined an interview, fearing further retaliation from ICE. His lawsuit was thrown out by a federal judge on 2 October.
The Road to the Statehouse
Watchdog groups report that more than two dozen people have been shot by ICE officers since the beginning of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in February 2025.
As Louis and fellow activists press on toward the Columbus statehouse, passing a large Amazon warehouse where dozens of Haitians were employed before the Trump crackdown, the human toll remains visible. She points to families forced to abandon newly purchased homes and return to Haiti following deportations—a strategy she views as a method by ICE to take the man so the family will follow.
