By Rev. Carl Ruby
Ohio Capital Journal
COMMENTARY
I’ve lived in Springfield, Ohio for 45 years.
In that time I’ve seen the city go from a seemingly unstoppable economic and population decline to a thriving locale fully on the upswing.
That miracle turnaround was thanks in part to the thousands of Haitian people seeking safety, many of them recipients of a little-known legal protection called Temporary Protected Status (TPS), who’ve arrived in recent years ready to contribute to the community and make Springfield flourish.
Haitian residents are business owners, workers, and church members. They’re parents, they’re students. They’re our neighbors, and they belong here. Yet our political leaders continue to attack them.
Every Springfield resident has their own story of the terrible days and weeks following Donald Trump’s dissemination of a racist hoax targeting hard-working Haitians making their home here.
There were bomb threats, assaults on the street, and children being pulled from school due to dangerous conditions.
Personally, I’ll never forget the fear on my congregation members’ faces during Sunday service.
But I also remember the good, the resilience and bravery from the broader community throughout that terrible period.
We resisted Trump’s cowardly bullying, sticking by each other when it mattered most. And now it’s time to do so again.
The president’s recent efforts to eliminate TPS for tens of thousands of Haitian residents aren’t just callous — they represent a new attack on our entire community.
Since it was first established in 1990, the TPS program, which offers safety and status in the U.S. to people from other countries who cannot return to their homes because of perilous conditions, has been uncontroversial and with bipartisan support. But no more.
Trump has been belligerent in his efforts to kick out TPS recipients with little consideration for both the dangerous conditions they fled in the first place as well as the lives they’ve built in the U.S., now teetering on the verge of collapse.
In response, we’ve witnessed not just indifference from members of Congress, including those representing us Ohioans, but in some cases, even celebration of this cruelty.
One sees this and can’t help but wonder how they could have strayed so far from the teachings of Christ.
As a pastor, it’s my job to help guide my congregation towards holiness not just in word but also in deed — a commitment that requires real courage and conviction.
It’s a responsibility I take with complete seriousness, something severely lacking these days among our political leaders.
It’s hard to imagine a faith leader taking the pulpit to deliver insults and inspire hate towards those brave enough to flee their homelands in perilous times, to label kindness as weakness or tell us to ignore essentially every moral teaching in the Bible.
They’d be run out of the parish, and with good reason. Yet that’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from the president and his supporters in Congress.
Luckily, there’s a better path. As soon as this month, the U.S. Senate could vote on a bill to preserve TPS protections for Haitians for three more years (the same bill already passed the House with bipartisan support).
This wouldn’t just thwart Trump’s reckless rug-pull from beneath people fleeing unimaginable danger back in Haiti, it would also offer stability and security to the broader Springfield community.
Now is the time for our leaders in Congress and justices of the Court to stand up for Ohio communities and against Trump’s bullying of our hard-working residents and neighbors. They must keep Haitian residents here, at home, where they belong.
Rev. Carl Ruby serves as senior pastor of Central Christian Church in Springfield; he founded Springfield Neighbors United and G92, both dedicated to supporting Haitians in Springfield facing deportation.