The air in Springfield, Ohio carries an unsettling quality these days. For almost two years, the post-industrial community has grappled with the potential loss of a sizeable portion of its population and workforce. That tension only grows more palpable as the Trump administration targets the status of many of the 15,000 Haitian immigrants within the city limits and the hundreds of thousands more beyond it.
In some ways, it’s become a new normal for Haitian Springfielders to anticipate the worst, and for their neighbors to fight against a government they see as threatening to rip their families apart. Viles Dorsainvil, the executive director of Haitian Community Support Center, calls it a lasting trauma that the immigrant population and their children will carry with them beyond this administration.
