Some Haitians in Ohio who lost protected status are being fitted with ankle monitors when they show up for ICE check-ins, a step that keeps them out of long-term detention while immigration judges decide whether they can remain in the United States.
The move matters now because more than 300,000 Haitians lost Temporary Protected Status after a Supreme Court decision in June, and ICE has been sorting through who will be monitored and who will be detained. For people who expected a mass sweep into custody, the outcome has been different, and for now, more limited.
Katie Kersh said several of her clients recently received ICE letters ordering them to appear in person. “We were really worried that this was going to be a mass enforcement, mass detention operation,” she said. “And so we went.”
When they did, Kersh said, the people were arrested but not held for long. They were fitted with ankle monitors and told they could not travel outside a 75-mile radius from home. ICE is alerting Haitians to those check-ins and using the monitors to track their whereabouts until a judge rules on whether they have a legitimate reason to stay.
That approach points to a simple calculation. ICE is choosing monitoring over detention in part because it does not have enough detention space for everyone whose status ended. ICE is currently holding about 65,000 immigrants in detention facilities across the country, while NBC News has reported that the agency is working to open new detention facilities.
The shift is also less severe than many had feared. Temporary Protected Status is a humanitarian program created by Congress for people from countries hit by war, natural disasters or other extreme conditions, and the June ruling ended protection for Haitians who came after the 2010 earthquake. The same ruling also allowed the administration to end protections for more than 50,000 Syrians who came when war broke out in 2015.
Still, the system leaves one thing unresolved for now: how many Haitians in Ohio have actually been placed on ankle monitors. That number has not been disclosed, even as the check-ins continue and immigration judges begin deciding who may stay. Until those cases are finished, the monitors are the clearest sign of how enforcement is being carried out, and how limited detention space is shaping it.
