Who Is Still Here

Two national newsrooms spent part of this week in Springfield, Ohio. The BBC published its account late on Monday night. The Washington Post published its own on Wednesday morning under the headline “There are no people” — this page could not read that one, because the Post’s article was not reachable, and nothing in this article comes from it.

What the BBC’s reporter found, this page did read, in full. It is a town with fewer Haitian people in it than there were a year ago, and the ones who remain are living around a small number of objects: a monitor on an ankle, a shop with nothing on the shelves, an attendance record at a school.

This page is not going to tell you to stay or to go. That decision belongs to you and to a lawyer who has read your file. What follows is organised by person — who is still here, what each of them was actually asked to do, and the one thing each can finish this week without anyone’s permission.

This is not a prediction about you.

The shop, and the man who walked into it

The grocery store belongs to Paschur Castelly, who left Haiti twenty years ago. The BBC describes most of his shelves as empty, except for the ones holding religious candles and framed pictures of Catholic saints.

“I can’t purchase new merchandise because I don’t have people coming in,” he said. And: “So, our communities, we have doctors, we have engineers… we came here to get a better life, to help our family in Haiti, you know? Our country doesn’t offer us security.”

When the reporters left, Castelly closed the door, which he now keeps locked. A neighbour who saw them outside feared it was an immigration raid and called over to ask whether he was all right.

The first customer to come through that door in twenty minutes was a man who asked not to be named. He said he had worked in a warehouse for three years. He pulled up his right trouser leg and showed the reporter a large ankle monitor.

Then he described how he got it. “I was given a choice, wear the ankle monitor and report in every two weeks, or sign my deportation order.”

It is one man’s account, given to a BBC reporter who met him and saw the device. No agency has confirmed that it puts the matter to people in those terms, and ICE has said publicly that monitors are part of what it calls its Alternatives to Detention programme. This page cannot tell you that everyone called in is offered the same two options.

What it can tell you is what to do if a piece of paper is put in front of you.

Do not sign anything you have not shown to a lawyer. Not at a check-in, not at a field office, not at a door. A signature is the one thing in this situation that you control completely and that is very hard to undo afterwards. If you are told you must sign immediately, you can say you want a lawyer to read it first. Ask for a copy of every page, including the ones you did not sign. If you are refused a copy, write down the date, the time, the office and the name or badge number of the person who refused, on paper, that day.

If you are already wearing a monitor: do not try to take the device off yourself, and keep going to every appointment. Missing one turns a bad situation into a worse one. Keep your own dated copy of every message you send and every paper you hand over, and give the copies to a lawyer — not only to the officer.

And if you are working, or employing people: no extension of work permits for Haiti has been published. This page checked the government’s own index of employment-authorization news again today, and the most recent item mentioning Haiti is still dated July 29, 2026. If an employer tells you something has changed, ask for it in writing and ask which page they read it on.

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The student, and the clock the school runs

Renatho Kemsley Casseus, 20, was arrested by ICE on Sept. 8 on his way to class at San Diego City College. A federal judge ordered him released on Oct. 16; he was driven out of the Otay Mesa Detention Center the following afternoon. He spoke to KPBS on Monday from his lawyer’s office. His parents sat to one side and would not show their faces on camera.

He described the arrest himself: “While I was going to the parking lot of my school I saw the ICE agents coming up from their cars and asking me to roll down my window and I did it. And they arrested me.”

He also said something that explains why this section exists. “I was worried for the Haitian community, but I wasn’t worried for me. Because I was a student — I didn’t think ICE agents would target a student.”

Here is the part of that story that reaches every household with someone in a classroom, and it has nothing to do with immigration law.

Marciano Perez, the college’s Vice President of Student Services, told KPBS that students are normally dropped from their classes after two weeks of not turning up. “In the past if a student stopped coming to campus you know instructors would typically drop a student for non-attendance,” he said, “now in some cases it might mean a student is detained.”

So there is a clock running in a registrar’s office that knows nothing about where a person actually is. Two weeks of absence and the enrolment goes, whatever the reason for it.

Perez said the college had seen more students asking how to withdraw for the semester, “whether that was taking a temporary pause or completely withdrawing,” and students writing to instructors to say: “Hey, I’m afraid to come to class but you have an attendance policy in place. I don’t know if I can get to campus safely, what are my options?”

The district’s own figures show what that adds up to. A spokesperson said enrolment at its College of Continuing Education has been “significantly impacted due to fears about immigration enforcement activity” going back to the spring; district data show a year-over-year fall there of more than 1,600 students between spring 2025 and spring 2026, and a fall of more than 440 students at City College over the same period. These are the district’s own counts of its own enrolment, not a count of anybody’s immigration status, and they say nothing about why any individual student stopped coming.

What a household can finish this week: ask the school or college, in writing, two questions. What is your attendance policy, and how many days can be missed before a student is dropped? And who do we contact, and how, if a student cannot attend because they have been detained? Ask by email so the answer is in writing, and keep it. If a leave of absence or a temporary pause exists, find out now what it is called and who signs it — not on the day you need it.

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What has not changed

At 7:30 this morning, from Springfield City Plaza, faith leaders and Haitian residents set out to walk the forty-odd miles to Columbus, over four days. Two newsrooms now carry it, and the details — including what this page could and could not confirm about the route — are in the entry at the top of the live updates. One of their four demands is to establish permanent protected status for Haitian people, and that demand needs a plain sentence beside it, because it is the kind of good news that gets people robbed. There is no such thing as permanent protected status today. It does not exist, there is nothing to apply for, and nothing about anyone’s case changes because this march is happening. Nobody may charge you a fee to sign you up for it or to put you on a list connected to it. If someone offers you a place on such a list, that list does not exist.

TPS for Haiti and Syria is terminated, effective July 27, 2026, and work permits expired the same day. This page checked the government’s own status page again today; both countries still appear there as terminated, and no new Federal Register notice touching either has been published since Oct. 14.

Losing TPS is still not a deportation order. That remains true for the great majority of people reading this. But if a judge has already ordered your removal, that order did not go away when TPS ended, and it needs a lawyer this week.

If someone — an official, a neighbour, a man outside a church — tells you that a court has ordered you to leave, you do not have to take their word for it and you do not have to pay anyone to find out. You can check your own case for free, yourself, on the immigration court’s automated line at 1-800-898-7180, by A-number, at any hour. It answers in English and Spanish only, and if you have never had an immigration court case you will find nothing there — which is itself an answer.

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