Ohio officials in state, Congress, need to step in after death of young Haitian student

This commentary discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please call or text the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.

A promising, young Haitian immigrant in Ohio, fitted with an ICE ankle bracelet in July, threw himself in front of a semi on I-70 on Monday. Pierre Damas Bel, a Springfield immigrant and new student at Wright State University, was pronounced dead at the scene. The 20-year-old, with big dreams of going to medical school, had been mocked by fellow students about the bulky ankle monitor he was forced to wear. On a July 30 Instagram post, Bel shared his pain.

“I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone. Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience,” Bel wrote. “I came here to study, build my future and to live a better life, not to be treated like a criminal.”

Like Bel, dozens of Springfield’s Haitians have been fitted with ankle monitors or detained by ICE after their Temporary Protected Status was officially ended by the Trump administration on July 27. The extreme toll on the community— that had come to Springfield legally under TPS to work and raise families until it was safe to return to Haiti— was ironically the emphasis of the “Unshackle Springfield” rally held the day before Bel took his own life.

The protest at city hall drew hundreds of faith leaders from across Ohio and the country, immigration advocates, asylum-seeking Haitians, and supporters but notably no political leadership (local, state, federal) with an elevated platform to decry the dehumanization of terrified Ohio residents.

“They’re nowhere. They’re hiding. They’re afraid of the federal government. They’re afraid of masked federal agents coming into Springfield with guns, ramming their cars against people driving down Springfield roads,” said an exasperated Lynn Tramonte, executive director of the Ohio Immigration Alliance. “I mean, who’s protecting us? I can’t believe we’re in this situation where the only people standing up are the faith community and regular, ordinary people who are on the lookout for ICE and doing these patrols.”

“The city of Springfield went from embracing the Haitian population that helped it grow to abandoning them in their hour of need.” 

Tramonte also said “agents of the U.S. government are using our tax dollars to terrorize good people who deserve to live in a safe place” and city officials are accommodating and actively assisting ICE out of fear.

She argued that the people in power who could bring peace to Springfield would rather offer “thoughts and prayers” for better days ahead than lead through conviction. The inhumanity is happening in Ohio, and Springfield is offering city property to make it more efficient.

Mayor Rob Rue once urged Congress to find a permanent legal solution for hard-working, tax-paying Haitian TPS holders in Springfield, strongly rejected the dehumanizing lies spewed by JD Vance and Donald Trump about pet-eating Haitians, and blamed consecutive bomb threats in his town on that hateful rhetoric, demonstrating that he had a functioning moral compass before.

But now, Tramonte said he is not talking publicly, and his rote political statements about enforcing the law and deporting criminals who break it “is not what we’re talking about in Springfield.”

ICE is “enforcing paperwork violations” as if they were heinous crimes, with raids, detentions, deportations, and boxy electronic shackles, she said. City officials are missing in action on purpose.

So is Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, added the immigrant advocate. After being an ardent proponent “for Haitian-Ohioans settling into their new home,” Gov. DeWine seems to have turned the page, Tramonte said. He published an op-ed in the New York Times that tries to pass the buck to President Trump, naively calling on him to “lead an effort to reform our immigration system—to make changes that prioritize our workforce needs while respecting our history of welcoming people fleeing from oppression and humanitarian crises.”

Tramonte noted wryly that “no one has ever used the words ‘Trump’ and ‘welcoming people fleeing oppression’ in the same sentence for a reason.”

The lame-duck governor, concluded Tramonte, feels like he’s done all he can. Time to move on. The ball is in Trump’s court.

“But when it’s your family, you don’t give up, and I just want him to think about it as these (Haitian immigrants), this is your family. These are Ohioans. These are your people. Don’t give up.”

DeWine can pick up the phone today, she added, and tell U.S. Sens. Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted that Ohio needs them. He can tell Ohio law enforcement to focus on criminal activity not civil immigration enforcement.

“They should not help the Trump administration send Ohioans to a country where they will be killed,” Tramonte said. “That is not who we are and now is the time to lead.”

Maybe DeWine will surprise us, and maybe Ohio’s U.S. senators will grow a spine to save an Ohio city and the immigrant population that revitalized it. I wish somebody of either party would seize the moment with the moral courage it demands. Because, as Martin Luther King Jr. taught “there comes a time when silence is betrayal.”

A Haitian son who came to Springfield with his family legally and lost that status through no fault of his own, was bullied about the large, black tracking unit ICE slapped on the leg of the honor student who played soccer and wanted to be a doctor.

When Pierre Damas Bel died by apparent suicide this week, DeWine called it “a horrible, horrible tragedy.” It is also a grievous stain on the state that conceded defeat on his future without a fight.