Notes on a Haitian Restauranteur in Springfield, Ohio
Ketlie Moise, owner of Keket Bongou Caribbean Restaurant in Springfield, Ohio
The Supreme Court is expected to decide in June or July whether Donald Trump has the power to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from roughly 350,000 Haitians, stripping them of work authorization and of protection from deportation.
When I visited Springfield, Ohio, in October 2024, the threat of mass deportation was already a topic of discussion in the city’s Haitian restaurants. At the time, I didn’t yet understand how central these spaces had become to Springfield’s roughly 15,000-member Haitian community. They were not just eateries, but gathering places for people living under the shadow of deportation.
As I’m working on a series of articles about Trump’s push for mass deportations, Springfield’s restaurants fit prominently into this picture. During my visits to the city, I visited the most popular Haitian restaurant in the city, Rose Goute Creole Restaurant, and talked with their customers. I also interviewed Ketlie Moise, the owner of Keket Bongou Caribbean Restaurant, twice, during two different visits, five months apart.
Trump wants to deport her and 350,000 other Haitians who have TPS to a country with no functioning government, that is controlled by gangs, where most of the doctors have left.
Any sane country would welcome someone like Ketlie with open arms.
But we are not there.
A Return to Springfield, Ohio in a Time of Ethnic Cleansing
Here’s a look back at my conversation with her:
In Keket Bongou Caribbean Restaurant, black and yellow balloons still hung in the dining room from the grand opening.
Ketlie Moise, the owner, told me she had been in Springfield for six years.
Sitting across from me in a booth, she said she had once owned a restaurant by the same name in Plaisance, in northern Haiti, until a gang came for her family.
“My husband was a politician,” she said. “They killed my mom, burned my business. I lost everything.”
Not long after her restaurant opened, Trump and J.D. Vance began spreading false rumors about Haitians eating cats and dogs in the city.
Moise told me many Haitians left Springfield for Columbus or Florida, frightened by the hostility and attention that the slander generated.
But the worry of most Haitians in the city was grounded in the reality that Trump was now doing everything possible to deport them all. But she didn’t mention this.
Instead, she expressed disappointment that I hadn’t ordered an entrée.
I promised I’d come back soon and try the fried goat.
Satisfied with that answer, she allowed me to take her photo in front of the restaurant as balloons hovered behind the glass.
from American Panoramas Beyond 360°: Poetry, Prose and Photography available from Indy Correspondent Press
Panoramas: (1)Downtown Springfield including City Hall; (2) Springfield Museum of Art; (3) Keket Bongou Caribbean Restaurant exterior (4); Ketlie Moise, owner of Keket Bongou; (5)Keket Bongou restaurant interior; (6,7) Rose Gout Restaurant exterior and interior
