From left, Springfield's Haitian Support Center's Reisha Fleming, Lindsay Aime, Rose--Thamar Joseph, Aaron Earlywine and Gethro Jean. (Photo courtesy of the Haitian Support Center)
Aid mounts for Yellow Springs’ Haitian neighbors
- Published: December 22, 2025
For the village’s Haitian neighbors about 15 minutes to the north, in Springfield, Jan. 1 marks not only the start of a new year, but the annual celebration of Haiti’s independence from French rule in 1804.
In 2026, though, a pall threatens to linger over what is typically a celebration of unity within community, as many of these neighbors remain unsure of what their futures will look like within the next few months.
A large number of Springfield’s about 15,000 Haitian residents, as estimated by the Springfield News-Sun, have come to the U.S. via Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, an immigration designation that allows people from countries experiencing political unrest to emigrate to the U.S.
TPS for Haitians is set to be revoked on Feb. 3, 2026.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration elected not to extend TPS for Haitian immigrants, and attempted to revoke the designation early in September, before being blocked by a federal court.
In the meantime, Springfield’s Haitian Support Center, or HSC — which marked its two-year anniversary last week — has mobilized to meet needs for Haitian residents, including partnering with Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, or ABLE, to offer legal counsel on seeking asylum; HSC also helps provide access to food and money for housing as ongoing employment becomes unstable.
Needs are already outpacing resources, HSC representatives told the News last week, and those needs are expected to increase as uncertainty builds around what the next months will hold. As HSC co-founder and executive director Viles Dorsainvil said, some Haitian residents were already laid off earlier this year after the Trump administration terminated the humanitarian parole program that provided work permits for thousands who entered the U.S. under that program. After Feb. 3, Haitian residents with TPS are expected to lose their jobs, too.
“And I know that beyond February, we will have more applications coming in,” Dorsainvil said. “But the funds we have for rents have been drained.”
To that end, HSC has established an Emergency Fund, which HSC Board Chair Brian Stevens called an “attempt to, as much as possible, be prepared for what’s coming” when TPS ends.
“Because we know that the clock is ticking,” he said.
He added that HSC raised about $15,000 on Dec. 2, Giving Tuesday, toward the Emergency Fund’s $50,000 goal.
For Yellow Springs Village Council member Carmen Brown, who also spoke with the News last week, the growing urgency has prompted her to want to amplify HSC’s emergency fundraising effort locally; she spoke briefly on the issue at Council’s Dec. 15 meeting, and told the News last week she plans to continue to stoke awareness of the needs of the village’s Haitian neighbors.
“It’s a very unstable, frightening time for a lot of people,” Brown said. “What can we do to leverage that with some monetary support?”
Dorsainvil said that, beyond food and housing needs, some Haitian residents who have applied for asylum still have their applications moving through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which will likely leave them waiting before they are eligible to apply for, and receive, a work permit. Others are still searching for immigration attorneys to help them apply for asylum, and he said that HSC is already seeing some legal appointments with ABLE scheduled beyond February.
On top of that, Dorsainvil added, is the immediate fear of deportation.
“And with that risk, there will be so many families that will be separated from kids or loved ones,” he said.
Part of HSC’s work is long-term community-building within Springfield; Dorsainvil pointed to the organization’s youth club, which aims to build connections for young Haitian residents whose families may not have a strong social network. Some teenagers, he said, can spend months cycling between school, church and home, with little else in their world. HSC’s youth club, he said, tries to widen that world through mental health support, personal development training, collaborative activities and exposure to the wider community.
“We do painting, we read with them,” Dorsainvil said. “We tap into different types of subjects that can help them understand themselves, but also develop their potential.”
Rose-Thamar Joseph, HSC’s co-founder and operations director, said that, because of the organization’s focus on community-building, it has needs outside of the material — mostly in terms of human resources.
“We are still looking for capacity building so we can better serve the community,” she said, adding that HSC is looking for professional training and connections to other organizations.
“And we need space to do more projects,” she said, noting that HSC’s own building is still under renovation, and that the youth club’s burgeoning soccer team needs a regulation-size field on which to play and coaches to aid the young players.
Brown said she hopes Yellow Springs residents will reach out to HSC to make personal connections and offer some of their own resources — monetary, human or both.
“People need to have a point of relation,” she said. “It’s one thing when it’s on a list, on a fundraising site; it’s another when you realize these are children, these are families.”
One thing those Haitian families share, Dorsainvil said, is an understanding that returning to their home country is not a matter of choice. Despite what federal leaders have claimed in order to end TPS status for Haitians, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have both reported within the last year that gang violence remains rampant in the country and that state institutions are largely absent; their conclusions have been that, overall, conditions have continued to deteriorate in Haiti.
In focus groups held by HSC, Dorsainvil said, many Springfield Haitian residents expressed a desire to go back to Haiti if conditions improved.
“It’s not because they are not willing to go back home, but the fear is that they are going back to the same situation that pushed them to leave the country,” he said, adding that the ongoing violence and instability in Haiti are linked to the flow of firearms into the country.
“And the influx of guns mostly comes from the U.S.,” he said.
His assessment is reflected in reporting from Al Jazeera in March last year, in which experts said that, while there is no precise count of weapons in Haiti, most firearms and ammunition trafficked into the country originate in the United States. A 2023 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report cited estimates of up to 500,000 legal and illegal weapons in Haiti, and Al Jazeera reported that more than 80% of weapons seized on their way to Haiti and traced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives between 2020 and 2022 were made in or imported to the U.S.
So, Dorsainvil said, many Haitian immigrants want to go home, but can’t trust that home is safe while the forces that fuel instability in Haiti remain in place.
At the same time, he said, Haitian residents in Springfield are aiming not to let fear eclipse their daily lives, even as they remain unable to project more than a month down the road what life will look like.
“Haitian people are resilient,” he said.
And he noted that HSC aims to continue offering help with material needs — rent, food, legal help, tuition for college students — as well as the chance to gather, celebrate, play and learn together amid a political climate that continually denies their humanity.
“We don’t want Haitians, because of this immigration issue, to lose sight of being human,” he said. “They are entitled to live as everybody else.”
To donate to HSC’s Emergency Fund, go to http://www.bit.ly/HSCEmergencyFund. For more information on HSC, or to connect with the organization, go to http://www.haitiansupportcenter.org.
The Yellow Springs News encourages respectful discussion of this article.
You must login to post a comment.
Don't have a login? Register for a free YSNews.com account.
No comments yet for this article.