The MAGA Ethnic Cleansing Monster Bares its Teeth in Springfield, Ohio
Ketlie Moise in front of Keket Bongou Restaurant, now shuttered because of ICE operations in the area Photo by Dan Grossman
On July 3, I visited Springfield, Ohio for the third time. Among the places I visited was Keket Bongou Caribbean Restaurant, located in a dilapidated mall southeast of downtown.
I ordered the legume dish which consisted of stewed leafy greens mixed with beef and served with rice.
Owner Ketlie Moise has lived in Springfield for six years with her daughter.
In Plaisance, in Northern Haiti, she had owned a restaurant by the same name until the day gang members burnt it down and killed her mom.
On July 27, 2026, roughly 350,000 Haitians lost their temporary protected status after the Supreme Court decided that Trump had the power to revoke their Temporary Protected Status (TPS), depriving them of their work authorization and of protection from deportation.
Moise was one of these TPS holders. She and her daughter had come to the US to seek refuge and to build a better life.
The first time I visited the restaurant, in October 2024, there were still black and gold balloons in the restaurant left over from the grand opening. Trump had not yet been re-installed in the White House. Moise had been gracious enough to sit down with me then and describe what had happened in the aftermath of Trump and Vance making false accusations against the Haitian community in Springfield of abducting and eating pets.
“We had our grand opening, and many people came and this happened,” she told me.
After Trump was reelected, Moise continued operating her restaurant—she was part of the reason the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland rated Springfield second among Ohio cities in terms of job growth in 2025. Approximately 12,000-15,000 Haitians live in this Southwestern Ohio city of 60,000 people.
I briefly got to chat with Moise as I ate my legume dish. She promised that the restaurant would continue operating despite the revocation of TPS and its effect on Springfield’s Haitian community—and its effect on her. I was afraid that her loss of status would affect the restaurant, and her ability to make a living, but she reassured me even if her facial expression seemed to be saying something else. She didn’t have a lot of time to talk because it was the lunch rush and she was very busy. I found that reassuring.
But within two months, her restaurant would be shuttered.
Later in the day when talking to Viles Dorsainvil, the executive director of the Haitian Community Help & Support Center, about Moise, he said, “She has to maybe think about speaking with a person who has a more permanent residence [status]...”
We talked in an office located in a local church. Even though we had talked before, he was still a little reluctant to have a conversation, because of social media influencers like Nick Shirley who made videos with little in the way of credible reporting and a lot in the way of inflaming the MAGA base. But he relented after I showed him my website with my previous reporting on my website.
During the times we talked previously, his organization had been focused on helping Haitian residents apply for driver’s licenses, deal with unscrupulous landlords and the like—helping many adapt to the routines of daily life in Springfield. Now the group had shifted focus, preparing the Springfield Haitians for likely deportation.
While not every Haitian in Springfield had TPS status—some were permanent residents, citizens, or had some other status—many were.
“Now we tell them,” Dorsainvil explained, “for those of them who have homes, we ask them to get in touch with the real estate agents who helped them buy those homes. That’s if they can manage those homes for them, in case something happens to them. We also tell them if they have businesses, they have to speak with a lawyer to know how they can transfer this business to a person who has a more permanent resident [status] that can manage the business for them, so we tell them to try to sign a power of attorney. If something happens to them, they will know that somebody else that they trust has the guardianship of the kids. So, at the end of the day, every single action that could help them to be safer—they have to take those actions for their own safety.”
Dorsainvil said that it was each individual Haitian’s choice to self-deport.
“It’s the goal of the administration when they take away the privilege that you have to work … you know that folks here live paycheck to paycheck,” he said. “Now you get to a situation where you cannot work, you cannot provide for yourself or your family automatically, life becomes unbearable, and you don’t have any other choice but to leave, so because if you’re not doing something, you will starve to death.”
Less than a month after our conversation, Springfield Haitians started calling Dorsainvil telling them that they had received notice to report to nearby ICE offices. At these appointments, according to advocates and attorneys, some have been given the choice to either accept $2,600 and a free flight home to Haiti or be fitted with an ankle monitor.
Pierre Damas Bel, a 20-year-old born in Haiti, found this humiliating. He had been a promising student at Springfield High School where he had played for the Springfield Wildcats High School soccer team. Per The Guardian Newspaper: ‘
On the morning of Monday, August 31, Bel walked into traffic on I-70 and was killed by a passing semi-truck. Police are investigating the death as a possible suicide. Meanwhile, on the streets of Springfield, ICE officers are an increasingly common site.
Reading this article this morning, I wondered what drives anyone who supports the ethnic cleaning of America’s Haitian community. The city of Springfield certainly isn’t going to benefit from the economic devastation that will likely follow. Even the Republican governor of Ohio, Mike Dewine, has called Trump’s mass deportation mania “a mistake”—at least when it comes to Springfield’s Haitians. But, looking through all the comments on the articles I’ve written on the subject, I can see that the mass deportations have their supporters. I mean, where do they get off?
At least in part because I lack any sense of composure on this issue, I look with admiration at Dorsainvil—who was trained as a pastor—and those who work with him, trying their best to help their fellow Haitians. I recall what he said at the end of our interview:
“It’s another chapter in our journey as Haitians,” he said with remarkable composure. “We have been through so many hardships, natural disasters, turmoil, corruption, the situation with the hoodlums. It’s not a question of us not willing to go back, but it’s a question of our safety. Other than that, we are so attached to our country, it wouldn’t mean anything for us to go back home but we know that situation on the ground: the same factors that caused us to leave are still there. So before making any decision, we have to think twice. Other than that, Haitians would have been ready to go back home.”
Springfield Panoramas: Vilas Dorsainvil at Haitian Community Help and Support Center in February 2025 photo by Dan Grossman
