Forty Miles to Columbus, and the Week After

On Saturday afternoon a walk that had taken four days and more than forty miles came to a close in Columbus. The people who finished it had set out from Springfield on Wednesday morning, slept in a church each night, and walked ten to twelve miles a day along Ohio roads. Some of them were wearing GPS ankle monitors while they did it, which was part of the point.

NBC4 WCMH, which reported the arrival, said members of Springfield’s Haitian community completed the walk and that organizers laid out three goals going forward: ICE agents out of Springfield, the release of Haitians now in detention, and more protections for immigrants from Ohio lawmakers. Before setting off, the organizers had published four demands, which The Haitian Times reported on Oct. 22 — an end to the ankle monitor program, ICE out of Springfield, detained Haitians reunited with their families, and permanent protection for Haitian people in the United States. This page is printing both lists as the outlets that carried them gave them, and is not merging them into one.

Here is the part that matters most for the week ahead, and it is not a comment on the march: nothing about anyone’s legal position changed when the walk ended. No law passed. No case moved. Nobody was released because of it. That gap between what was asked for and what exists is a predictable, dangerous week — it is exactly when someone appears offering to put your name on a list.

This is not a prediction about you.

What the walk asked for, and what exists today

Two of the four published demands are requests for something that does not exist yet, and both are worth naming plainly.

Permanent protection for Haitians. There is no permanent protected status. There is no form for it, no application, no waiting list and no fee. A bill called S. 4814 would extend TPS for Haitian nationals, and advocates in Florida spent this weekend urging that state’s two U.S. senators to co-sponsor it. This page has carried that same request to those same two senators since Sept. 10. It is not law. Nothing about anyone’s case changes because it has been asked for again.

An end to the ankle monitor program. Nothing has ended. The monitors this page has covered since August are still being fitted and are still being worn, including by some of the people who walked to Columbus.

So if, in the next few days, anyone tells you that the march won something, that a list is being compiled, that there is a new program for Haitians, or that they can register you for protection for a fee — that is the fraud this week is built for. Nobody may charge you a fee to sign you up for anything the marchers asked for, because there is nothing to sign up for. If a person or an office asks you for money to put you on any such list, that alone tells you what they are.

If you are wearing an ankle monitor

Your own conditions did not change on Saturday. Go to every appointment, on the date you were given, even if it feels pointless and even if you have gone twenty times already. Missing one is the thing that creates a new problem where none existed.

Do not try to take the device off yourself, no matter what anyone tells you about the march or about a program ending.

If the monitor is injuring you — sores, swelling, a wound that will not close — get it documented by a clinic in writing, keep your own copy of that document, and give a copy to a lawyer and not only to the officer. A paper you handed over and cannot produce again is a paper that is not in the record. Tools and documents has what to keep and where to keep it.

If someone in your house is in detention

The release of detained Haitians was one of the demands. No one was released by the demand being made.

If someone in your family is being held, work the record instead of the news: how to find someone in detention walks through the ICE locator and what to do when a search comes back empty. Check daily rather than once. Write down the facility and the date every single time you check, because a transfer is common and “released” in a records system has meant a transfer to another state before.

A missing entry is a fact about the institution’s records, not a fact about the person. It means make a phone call, not draw a conclusion.

If your work permit ended on July 27

TPS for Haiti and Syria is terminated, effective July 27, 2026, and the work permits that ran with it ended the same day. That is still what USCIS’s own page said when this site read it on Saturday, and it has not moved.

Losing TPS is still not a deportation order. That sentence is the most important one on this page and it is true for most people reading it. There is a minority for whom something more is true: if an immigration judge has already ordered your removal, that order did not go away when TPS ended, and it did not go away on Saturday either. Ending TPS is still not a judge ordering you personally to leave — but if a judge already did, that is a separate thing and you should see a lawyer this week.

If an officer, a neighbour or a notario tells you that the courts have ordered Haitians to leave, you can check your own case for free. The Executive Office for Immigration Review runs an automated line at 1-800-898-7180, twenty-four hours a day, which will give you your next hearing date and any decision by A-number. It works in English and Spanish only, and if you have never had an immigration court case it will find nothing at all — which is information, not a bad sign. Free legal help is the next step after that call, not instead of it.

The vigil in Florida, and what going to one does not do

Separately, advocates said they would hold an interfaith vigil outside the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Florida on Sunday, Oct. 25, honouring people who died in ICE custody or were fatally shot by immigration agents. South Florida Caribbean News carried the notice on Oct. 24; it names the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Palm Beach County Indivisible and Detention Watch Network among the groups taking part, and it says the event time is still to be confirmed. This page could not confirm a time with anyone, so check with the organizers before you travel rather than going on a listing alone.

A vigil is not legal help, and attending one changes nothing about your own case. If you are not going — and many people reading this will decide not to stand outside a detention centre, which is a reasonable decision — nothing is lost from your file by staying home.

What has not changed

The designation is terminated. The work permits expired. Neither a march nor a vigil nor a bill that has not passed alters either of those facts, and this page will not pretend otherwise in the hopeful direction any more than in the frightening one.

What also has not changed: you do not have to open your door without a warrant signed by a judge, you do not have to answer questions about where you were born, and you can write down what you saw and give it to a lawyer. Know your rights has those in all three languages, on one page you can print.

Forty miles is a long way to walk wearing a monitor. The people who did it were asking for something real that does not exist yet. The honest thing this page can tell you is both halves of that sentence at once.

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