Federal authorities are preparing a major operation to locate and arrest Haitian nationals whose Temporary Protected Status is set to expire within days, a move that could affect more than 300,000 people nationwide and hit Springfield, Ohio, hardest of all.
ICE plans to dramatically ramp up enforcement targeting Haitians whose TPS is expected to end imminently, multiple federal sources told Fox News. The expanded operation could begin as soon as this week, after the Supreme Court's certified judgment is transmitted to lower courts, a step expected Monday that clears the legal path for the Trump administration to proceed with ending the protections.
The Supreme Court last month reversed lower-court judgments that had kept TPS terminations for Haiti and Syria on hold while litigation dragged on. That ruling removed the last major legal barrier standing between the administration and the end of a program it has long argued was never meant to last fifteen years.
Ohio, and Springfield in particular, will be heavily targeted, federal sources said. The small western Ohio city became a flashpoint in the national immigration debate during the 2024 presidential campaign after its Haitian population grew rapidly. Now it stands at the center of the federal government's enforcement plans.
TPS was first granted to Haitian nationals after a devastating earthquake leveled much of the country in 2010. The designation was renewed repeatedly under successive administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, until the Trump administration moved to end it, arguing the temporary label had become permanent in all but name.
The numbers are large. Federal data listed 330,735 Haitians with approved TPS applications as of March 2025, Newsmax reported. Other estimates cited by DHS and in federal reporting put the figure closer to 350,000 or even above 500,000, depending on whether the count includes pending applicants and those who entered under related Biden-era parole programs.
DHS General Counsel James Percival celebrated the Supreme Court's decision in a post on X.
"The Court vindicates DHS yet again. The T in TPS stands for TEMPORARY, yet many of these designations became de facto amnesty. This is a win for the rule of law and common sense."
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson called the ruling a tremendous win and framed it as vindication of the administration's core position on immigration.
"Today, the Supreme Court affirmed what President Trump has always maintained: temporary protected status is, by definition, temporary. It was never intended to be a pathway to permanent status or legal residency."
Jackson added that the administration "continues to lawfully end the egregious abuses to our immigration system that have hurt Americans for years."
The administration is not relying solely on enforcement. DHS has paired its deportation push with a self-deportation incentive: free airfare and a $2,600 payout for Haitians who voluntarily return home. A DHS statement framed the offer bluntly, as the Washington Examiner reported:
"What we would say now is it's closing time which means you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. The good news is it's not too late to get a $2,600 check and a free flight home."
TPS for Haitians was extended by two weeks on July 10, pushing the new expiration date to July 24, Breitbart noted, citing the Dayton Daily News. That means the window between the Supreme Court's mandate hitting the lower courts and the formal expiration is vanishingly small, days, not weeks.
Reports from Springfield suggest some Haitians have already begun leaving. One unverified claim cited by Breitbart put the figure at 80 percent of the city's Haitian population, though that number has not been confirmed. Roughly 15,000 Haitians had settled in Springfield before the TPS fight reached the Supreme Court.
Not everyone in Ohio sees the enforcement push as a clean win. Republican Governor Mike DeWine has repeatedly warned that pulling thousands of workers out of his state's labor force overnight would damage the economy.
"If they lose temporary protected status and they no longer can work and the companies can't employ them, that's a blow to the economy. That's a blow to the state."
DeWine's concern is shared by local employers and faith leaders. About 100 community members, clergy, and Haitian leaders in Springfield gathered for training sessions organized to prepare for potential deportations, the Associated Press reported. Participants trained to provide shelter, accompany Haitians to ICE appointments, and advocate on their behalf.
Carl Ruby, senior pastor of Central Christian Church in Springfield, put the stakes in stark terms: "It would be an absolute disaster if we lost 10,000 of our best workers overnight because their TPS ends and they can no longer work."
The economic argument deserves a fair hearing. But it does not answer the legal one. TPS was created as a short-term shield, a way to pause deportations when a natural disaster or armed conflict made return genuinely dangerous. Haiti's earthquake was fifteen years ago. The program's defenders have to explain why "temporary" should stretch across three presidencies and counting.
The road to this week's enforcement push ran through years of litigation. DHS ended TPS for Haitians last summer, but lower courts blocked the move. A U.S. District Court judge issued a temporary stay against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's termination order, finding it "substantially likely" that the decision had been preordained by hostility toward nonwhite immigrants. That judge also pointed to the State Department's own travel advisory, reissued in July 2025, which tells Americans: "Do not travel to Haiti for any reason," citing kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and limited health care.
The contradiction was real. One arm of the federal government was telling American citizens to stay away from Haiti while another arm was preparing to send hundreds of thousands of Haitians back. Judge Ana Reyes put it sharply: "'Do not travel to Haiti for any reason' does not exactly scream, as Secretary Noem concluded, 'suitable for return.'"
The Supreme Court, however, sided with the administration and reversed the lower courts. The high court's ruling removed the judicial blockade, and its certified judgment, expected to hit the lower courts Monday, gives the administration the green light to act.
The administration's position is straightforward: the executive branch designates and terminates TPS. Courts that second-guessed that authority overstepped. The Supreme Court agreed.
Haiti is, by any honest measure, a dangerous and unstable country. The State Department's travel advisory speaks for itself. Gang violence, political chaos, and collapsing infrastructure have made large parts of the country ungovernable.
Critics of the TPS termination argue that sending people back into those conditions is reckless. Supporters counter that TPS was never designed to be a permanent residency program and that allowing it to function as one, for fifteen years, made a mockery of the law's plain language.
Both points can be true at the same time. Haiti's problems are real. So is the fact that a "temporary" designation that lasts a decade and a half has become something Congress never authorized: a backdoor path to indefinite residence. The Trump administration has chosen to enforce the statute as written. The Supreme Court has said it can.
Fox News reached out to both ICE and DHS for comment on the anticipated enforcement operation. Neither agency's response was included in the reporting.
Springfield's Haitian community drew national attention during the 2024 presidential campaign, when the city's rapid demographic shift became a talking point in the immigration debate. Now, with TPS days from expiration and ICE ramping up operations, the city is about to become something else: a real-time test of whether the federal government can follow through on a policy that has been debated, litigated, and delayed for years.
The administration has the legal authority. It has the Supreme Court's backing. It has an enforcement apparatus preparing to move. The question is whether the political will holds when the cameras arrive and the stories of individual families start making the rounds.
For fifteen years, "temporary" meant permanent in practice. The law always said otherwise. Now the government is finally acting like it means what the statute says, and the people who built their lives around the assumption that it never would are running out of time.
