Ohio Pastor Tells Heartbreaking Story About a Young Haitian Immigrant No Longer Granted TPS

A senior pastor with Central Christian Church in Springfield, OH, told a heartbreaking story about a young Haitian boy in his community who was no longer granted Temporary Protected Status following Friday’s Supreme Court decision.

Springfield was the Ohio town where both Donald Trump and J.D. Vance repeated a conspiracy theory during the 2024 race that Haitian immigrants were “eating” their neighbors’ pets.

Pastor Carl Ruby called the Supreme Court ruling “a tragedy for Haitian families whose lives are going to be put at risk” during a Saturday interview on CNN Newsroom.

“It’s a tragedy for our city,” Ruby said. “Our city had been shrinking for half a century. And when Haitians showed up, it was the first time that we have grown. They have filled jobs. They’ve started businesses. It’s going to be an economic hit for our city. And it’s also going to be hit for our churches. There are many churches in town that have grown because of the Haitian families who have started worshiping with us and sit in our pews every week. And this is going to be a huge setback to our community, to our Haitian friends and to our churches.”

CNN’s Fredericka Whitfield asked, “How worried are you for people who had Temporary Protective Status being deported and returning to areas that were hostile?”

“Let me tell you a fresh story of something that happened just this past week,” Ruby added. “A child in my church come up and there were several children sitting around talking about farm animals, and they start talking about pigs. And a Haitian boy very soberly said, ‘I’ve seen huge pigs in Haiti.’ And I said, ‘What were they doing?’ And he said, ‘They they were eating the bodies.’ And I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. And I asked others about that later, and they confirmed that those are things that he had witnessed in Haiti.”

Ruby continued, “And I just asked my fellow Americans, especially Christians: Imagine being a child who has witnessed that now living in fear of being sent back.”

After the SCOTUS ruling, conservative commentators like Megyn Kelly took a victory lap.

Kelly said on her podcast, “Get out! Go home! Go back to f*cking Haiti! Sorry, I’m just I’m thinking about our friends in Ohio who’ve been dealing with these TPS Haitians for years now who are drunk driving all over their towns and killing people. This is the whole cats and dogs thing, like, they don’t want to live like Americans live. And this was supposed to be a temporary — It was supposed to be temporary help and it’s turned into another backdoor way of allowing someone permanent residency here.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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