Springfield Buries a 20-Year-Old and Demands an End to the Ankle Monitors: What Is Verified, What Is Only Claimed, and What Has Not Changed

On Tuesday afternoon, in the sanctuary of Central Christian Church in Springfield, a pastor read out a statement that a Haitian father had written hours after his son died. “After my son was outfitted with an ankle monitor, he felt like he was treated like an animal,” it said. The family sat in the room and did not speak.

Pierre Damas Bel was 20. He graduated with honors from Springfield High School in May, played varsity soccer, was in the National Honor Society and the Marine Corps Junior ROTC, and had started at Wright State University on Aug. 24 studying neuroscience, planning on medical school. On Monday morning, Aug. 31, the Ohio State Highway Patrol’s Springfield Post says troopers were called at 8:45 a.m. to mile marker 66 of Interstate 70 westbound, where Bel had parked his 2006 Toyota Avalon on the shoulder, got out, and walked into the lanes, where he was struck by a tractor-trailer.

This page has carried the facts of that morning since they were established. What Tuesday added was three things: his father’s words, ICE’s own account of why he was wearing a monitor, and a city asking the federal government, out loud, to stop.

Here is what is verified, what is only claimed, what has not changed — and what to do this week.

What is verified

The death, and the open investigation. The Highway Patrol’s account above is the official one, and OSHP has said the crash remains under investigation. That matters and we are not going to write past it. Every account of why he walked into that road comes from people who loved him, not from an authority that has finished its work.

The family’s account, in two different voices. Pastor Carl Ruby of Central Christian Church, who founded the immigrant-advocacy nonprofit G92 and was with Bel’s parents on Monday night, says the family wants it known as a suicide. His father, Pierre Ronal Bel, told The Haitian Times the same day, speaking in Haitian Creole, that he does not believe his son killed himself and that he wants to see proof. Both of those are true reports of what this family has said. We are printing both because neither one is the whole of what a family thinks in the first 48 hours.

What the father put in writing. In the statement Ruby read on Tuesday: his son took two trips, to Cincinnati and to Westerville, to plead with officers to have the bracelet taken off, because he was a soccer player and felt humiliated; classmates at Wright State bullied him, telling him he was a criminal. The father also wrote that his son was denied a JROTC uniform because of the monitor — the Springfield News-Sun says plainly it has not independently verified that detail, and neither have we.

ICE’s own account. Answering the Springfield News-Sun, an ICE spokesperson said Bel applied to enter the United States on March 5, 2024, at the Gateway Port of Entry through a CBP One appointment and was released into the country, and that on July 29 ICE “placed him on alternatives to detention program with an ankle monitor while he continued in his immigration proceedings.” Read that clause again, because it is the most useful sentence the agency has given this beat: by ICE’s own description, the monitor is something it puts on a person whose case is still going — not the end of a case, and not a decision by a judge.

The demand. On Tuesday a coalition of Haitians, Springfield pastors and activists called on the Department of Homeland Security and on lawmakers to end GPS ankle monitoring of immigrants. “Humbly, I make an appeal to the human being in you to shut down this program of shackling the community,” said Vilès Dorsainvil, who heads the Haitian Community Help and Support Center. “You don’t have to shame the people.” He also said this: “Last Sunday, we were having a peaceful march asking to unshackle Springfield, and today, we are living with the consequences of shackling Springfield.”

How many people this touches. Nobody outside the government has an exact count, and the honest thing is to give you the range as its sources gave it. The Springfield News-Sun reports that hundreds of local Haitians have been fitted with monitors, either at appointments at ICE’s Blue Ash office near Cincinnati or after being detained and released, and that many report pain, swelling, blisters, or trouble keeping a job. The Haitian Support Center told Religion News Service it estimates more than 100 people have been fitted. On detentions, Dorsainvil counted 34 Haitians detained to date, most at the Butler County Jail; a Dayton Daily News jail census on Aug. 28 counted more than 40 across four Ohio jails. Those are different people counting different things on different days. Treat any of them as a floor, not a roster — which is exactly why a missing relative is a search you run yourself, tonight, and not a number you wait for.

And nationally. NBC News reported Tuesday, from a senior DHS official describing preliminary data, that ICE arrested roughly 50,000 people in August — on par with July, which was the highest single month of this administration. The number is not Haitians and it is not deportations; it is arrests, of everyone, everywhere. The detail that matters for how you plan your week is the one NBC’s reporters put in their own voice: this surge is less visible than the city-by-city operations earlier in the year. A quiet street is not evidence that anything has slowed down.

What is claimed, and not confirmed

Two pastors from Springfield are in detention. Joubert Adrien, the Haitian ministry pastor at High Street Church, was taken on Aug. 20; his wife, Denise Adrien Gedeon, described to Religion News Service how a car cut in front of theirs after they pulled out of a gas station, four more cars surrounded them, and masked officers asked for IDs and work permits before handcuffing the two men. He is at the Butler County Jail. Julio Dumano, an assistant pastor at First Haitian Evangelical Church, was detained Aug. 25, and clergy say his whereabouts are unknown. Advocates say Adrien has no criminal history and no final order of removal. ICE has confirmed none of this.

Ruby also told Religion News Service that in meetings with regional and national ICE leaders he was told their aim was to make life for Haitians in the United States “as miserable as possible.” That is his account of private meetings; ICE has not confirmed it and we cannot check it. We print it as what he says he was told, and nothing more.

For its part, DHS has said it conducts law enforcement activity across the country every day and does not discuss ongoing or future operations, and that TPS was meant to be temporary and had become a de facto amnesty. ICE’s website says its “Alternatives to Detention programs exist to ensure compliance with release conditions and provide important case management services for non-detained aliens.”

What has not changed

Losing TPS is not a deportation order. It ended a status; it is not an immigration judge ordering you, personally, to leave. If a judge has already ordered your removal, that is a separate thing, it is real, and it is worth seeing a lawyer about this week. You can find out for free which of those describes you: call the immigration court’s automated line, 1-800-898-7180, with your A-number. It is English and Spanish only, so have someone sit with you — and if you have never had a case in immigration court, you will find nothing there, which is the answer for most people reading this.

A monitor is a condition of supervision. It is not a conviction, and it is not an order that you leave. A pending asylum application, as ICE’s own guidance says and this page reported on Aug. 21, is not legal status — filing does not protect you, and nobody should tell you it does.

At your door, nothing has changed either: you do not have to open it, and you can ask an officer to show a warrant signed by a judge, through the window or under the door.

What to do this week

• If you are the one in trouble tonight, 988 answers 24 hours a day. Call rather than text if you need another language, and say the name of the language when they pick up: 988’s own FAQ says it connects an interpreter in more than 240 additional languages, by voice call only, in about 20 seconds. Press 2 for Spanish. Haitian Creole is not named on its site, so ask for it by name, and have someone sit with you if you can.
• If your monitor hurts. Tell your lawyer, say it at every check-in, and write down the date each time you report it. A record is the only thing anyone can act on later.
• If someone has stopped answering the phone, start the search yourself — how to find someone who has been detained →. A transfer out of state can happen in about a day, so the locator search and the lawyer call belong the same night.
• If you saw an arrest, report what you witnessed → — dates, places and plate numbers are what lawyers use.
• Two vigils for Pierre Damas Bel, per WYSO: in Columbus at 6 p.m. Wednesday at 90 West Broad St., and in downtown Springfield at Fountain Square at 5:30 p.m. Friday, hosted by Springfield Neighbors United.
• Get your papers in one place before you need them — checklists and tools → — and find free or low-cost legal help →.

Pastor Philomene Philostin, who runs a Springfield youth program called Fomsove — Creole for must save — had one message for young Haitians this week: “Do not kill yourself. God has a plan for you, and I believe he has a better plan for you.”

You do not have to leave. You do not have to hide. And you do not have to face any of this without a lawyer and without a record.