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haitians
'Blood Is On Their Hands': Haitian Student Dies In Apparent Suicide After Trump Ends Deportation Protections
"Because of the blatant cruelty and racism of Trump’s immigration policies, Pierre Damas Bel was denied the chance to fulfill his dreams."
Sep 01, 2026
Since President Donald Trump was running for office two years ago, Springfield, Ohio has been a central target of Trump and Vice President JD Vance's racist attacks and violent mass deportation operation, with the White House threatening the city's Haitian population with forced removal back to their unstable home country.
On Monday, Springfield became the site of a new tragedy that immigrant rights advocates said was directly caused by the Trump administration's xenophobic agenda, particularly its termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 350,000 Haitian migrants, when 20-year-old Pierre Damas Bel was killed by a tractor trailer on Interstate 70—apparently dying by suicide after the loss of the protections pushed him into despair.
As The Washington Post reported Tuesday, college student and aspiring doctor Bel parked on the highway's shoulder Monday morning, got out of his car, and walked into westbound traffic. He was pronounced dead at the scene after being struck.
Ohio authorities are investigating, but Bel's family believes his death to be a suicide.
His family told the Post that Bel had become distressed in recent weeks after the US Supreme Court allowed Trump's termination of TPS for Haitians and Syrians.
Although he had a pending asylum case and a hearing scheduled for October, Bel was required to report to a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of terminating TPS. Officers placed an electronic monitoring device on his ankle.
In late July, Bel wrote in an Instagram post: “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.”
The Post reported that classmates bullied Bel over the bracelet, and he was unable to continue playing soccer as he had for years.
“He felt like he was treated like an animal,” his father, Pierres Ronal Bel, told the Post.
Last Friday, it appeared that Bel would not be able to continue in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) due to the Trump administration's monitoring of him as it pursued deportation. As the Post reported:
His JROTC class instructor handed students their uniforms, which resemble those of the US armed forces, but did not give one to Bel. His father said the college student concluded it was because of the device strapped around his ankle.
“He came home that day feeling very bad,” Pierres Ronal Bel said through a translator.
Bel "killed himself because of the Trump administration’s obsession with hurting Haitians and the humiliating shame of an ICE ankle monitor," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. "His blood is on their hands."
The White House had threatened to flood Springfield with ICE agents earlier this year when it first announced it was ending TPS, which for 16 years has provided Haitians with deportation protections. During the 2024 election, Springfield ended up in Trump and Vance's crosshairs as the two Republicans spread baseless, racist lies that Haitian community members there were eating their neighbors' pets.
TPS was initially granted to Haitians after the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 in Haiti—one of the worst disasters in modern history and one that the country has struggled to fully recover from, as it's also faced soaring violence and unrest following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. The US State Department warns Americans not to travel to Haiti for any reason due to gang violence, kidnappings, and an ongoing humanitarian crisis there.
Despite that, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has gloated that "the T in TPS stands for TEMPORARY" and urged Haitians who have been legally living and working in the US for years to go back to "Home Sweet Haiti"—making such comments as at least 47 people were killed and 50 were kidnapped in a gang attack near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince late last month.
Guerline Jozef of the Haitian Bridge Alliance told the Post that the Trump administration's policies "are what caused [Bel's] untimely death."
Bel came to the US in 2024 to reunite with his parents, who had left Haiti three years earlier. Reichlin-Melnick said that "he almost certainly flew here through the [Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans] parole program, entering legally after a background check and probably with his parents having sponsored him. He broke not a single law. Not one."
Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García (D-Ill.) said that "because of the blatant cruelty and racism of Trump’s immigration policies, Pierre Damas Bel was denied the chance to fulfill his dreams."
"This never should have happened," he said. "His blood, and the blood of all those who have died as a result of these policies, is in the hands of Trump and his top officials who have championed them."
The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline—which offers 24/7, free, and confidential support—can be reached by calling or texting 988, or through chat at 988lifeline.org.
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'Bigotry' as Government Policy: Trump Orders ICE to Ramp Up Arrests of Haitians
"ICE has been ordered to round up nurses, home health aides, factory workers, teachers, students, and thousands of others who have been living and working here legally for years; who’ve done nothing wrong."
Jul 27, 2026
Mass arrests of Haitian immigrants by federal agents could begin as early as this week, according to federal documents regarding President Donald Trump's new directive to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement following the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court's ruling that Trump could end deportation protections for the community.
A binding mandate was expected to be sent to lower courts on Monday regarding the high court's decision last month that held the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could strip 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians of their Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which is granted to migrants from certain countries facing disasters, armed conflicts, or other conditions that would put immigrants in danger if they were forced to return there.
After the mandate is transmitted, Haitians across the country will lose their ability to legally live and work in the US, and the administration is reportedly already planning to send ICE agents into states including Ohio—where Haitian communities were targeted by Trump and Vice President JD Vance during the 2024 election—to quickly arrest and deport migrants to their crisis-stricken home country.
Jean Négot Bonheur Delva, director-general of Haiti’s National Office of Migration, told the Haitian Times this month that according to the US embassy in the Caribbean country, about 250 former TPS beneficiaries could be forced back to Haiti on flights each week.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, emphasized that the reported operation targeting Haitian communities is just the latest evidence that Trump is rounding up people who have been living and working in the US for years, despite the White House's claims that it is going after "the worst of the worst."
"The majority of Haitians with TPS today entered the US lawfully on humanitarian parole during the Biden administration, and then transitioned to TPS before their parole status expired," said Reichlin-Melnick. "Those people have not spent a single day in violation of immigration law."
The crisis in Haiti that necessitated TPS for people who arrived in the US from the country, he added, "hasn't ended."
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with widespread food insecurity, and large swathes of the country as well as transport routes are controlled by armed gangs. Violence intensified toward the end of 2025 "and remains the dominant force shaping the daily life of Haitians," according to the United Nations, with more than 8,100 killings reported last year, and gangs have increasingly used children in violent attacks.
Many healthcare facilities are "barely functioning," and extreme weather including hurricanes and droughts have worsened the humanitarian crisis. The country has also struggled to fully recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands of Haitians.
Last week, US Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) spoke out about a Pentagon plan to strengthen coordination between the UN's Gang Suppression Task Force in Haiti and a private military contractor run by Erik Prince, a close ally of Trump's. The contractor, Vectus Global, has conducted drone strikes that have killed dozens of Haitian civilians.
Those conditions are what DHS suggested Haitians should voluntarily return to, after having built lives in the US, when the agency told CBS News on Monday that TPS has been used as a "defacto amnesty program" and called on people who are about to lose protections that have been in place for 16 years to "self-deport."
"What we would say now is it's closing time which means you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here," DHS told CBS News. "The good news is it's not too late to get a $2,600 check and a free flight home."
The Supreme Court's majority asserted last month that Trump administration officials did not make "overtly racial" comments about Haitians that would suggest the push to end TPS for the population was driven by "racial animus"—but US District Judge Ana Reyes in the District of Columbia came to the opposite conclusion earlier this year, saying then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had likely pushed to end TPS "because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants.”
Reyes pointed out that Noem had not acknowledged the $1.3 billion Haitian TPS holders pay each year in taxes, and said Trump's racist comments about Haitians in the US—including that they "probably have AIDS" and that residents of the community in Springfield, Ohio were eating their white neighbors' pets—were rooted in "racial animus."
The ICE directive to ramp up enforcement operations against "an ethnic group the president has repeatedly attacked is bigotry as official government policy," said Reichlin-Melnick.
Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) called on members of Congress to sign on to a discharge petition she put forward for a vote on "the American Dream and Promise Act, to extend protections for TPS holders from Haiti and 16 other countries."
"In less than four days, House Democrats secured 210 signatures, including two Republicans, we just need eight more members of Congress to force a vote," said Garcia. "TPS holders, you are not alone, we are with you!"
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