Fact Check: Are Haitian Immigrants in Springfield, USA Illegal? | US elections 2024

CBS News moderators cut off the vice presidential candidates' microphones only once during the Oct. 1 vice presidential debate: during a discussion on immigration. Specifically, when they were talking about the topic of immigration in Springfield, Ohio, the small Midwestern town thrown into the national spotlight after former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, spread baseless allegations that immigrants ate pets there.

The point at issue: Are Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, to the United States illegally?

During the debate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz criticized Vance for spreading false information about Haitian immigrants in Springfield. The moderators gave Vance one minute to respond.

In Springfield, Ohio, and in communities across the country, you have overwhelmed schools, overwhelmed hospitals, completely unaffordable housing because we have brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for rare accommodation. , Vance said.

Walz spoke again before moderator and host of CBS News' Face the Nation, Margaret Brennan, intervened.

And just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio, has a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status: temporary protected status, Brennan said.

Margaret, the rules were that you weren't going to fact-check me, and since you're fact-checking me, I think it's important to say what's really happening, Vance said. So there's an app called CBP One, where you can continue as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole and get legal status with the wave of Kamala Harris' wand. This is not about someone coming in, applying for a green card and waiting 10 years.

We evaluated Vances' statement regarding the phone app, which is a scheduling tool, not an application for asylum or parole, mostly false.

For this claim, we'll focus on Springfield's Haitian immigrants, who city officials say make up most of the immigrants who have settled there in the past four years. Are they legally in the United States?

We cannot confirm the status of every immigrant who recently moved to the city. But local and state officials said most of them are there legally because they are in the United States with temporary legal protections, humanitarian parole and temporary protected status.

Immigration law experts told PolitiFact that Haitians in these temporary programs are in the United States legally.

Vances' spokesperson did not respond to our request for comment. But Vance has already said about Haitian migrants: If [Democratic presidential candidate] Kamala Harris waves a wand, illegally, and says these people are now here legally, I'm still going to call them illegal aliens.

Immigration programs grant Haitians temporary permission to be in the United States

President Joe Biden has created and expanded ways for Haitians and other immigrants to live and work temporarily and legally in the United States. They are:

Humanitarian Parole for Applicants Outside the United States: In January 2023, Biden expanded a humanitarian parole program for Venezuelans to include Haitians, Cubans, and Nicaraguans. Under this program, each month, up to 30,000 eligible individuals are eligible for humanitarian parole, allowing them to legally enter the United States and live and work there for a period of up to go up to two years. To be eligible for the program, individuals must apply from outside the United States and have a U.S. sponsor, such as a family member.

As of August, nearly 214,000 Haitians had entered the United States under this humanitarian parole.

Temporary Protected Status: In June, the Biden administration expanded and renamed Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants. People with temporary protected status are protected from deportation. This protection is granted by the Department of Homeland Security to people from certain countries affected by wars, environmental disasters and epidemics. The program also allows eligible immigrants to live and work legally in the United States for periods of six to 18 months. To apply, Temporary Protected Status recipients must be in the United States at the time of their home country designation.

Before the June redesignation, approximately 200,000 Haitians benefited from temporary protection. The June action allowed any Haitian who met the eligibility criteria and was living in the United States as of June 3, 2024, to apply. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that an additional 309,000 Haitians would be eligible.

People can apply for temporary protected status whether they entered the United States legally or illegally.

Humanitarian parole at U.S. ports of entry: In January 2023, Biden expanded the use of CBP One, the phone scheduling app launched by the Trump administration to allow Mexicans to make appointments at ports of entry United States officials. There, immigration officials can grant people humanitarian parole for up to two years, allowing them to live and work in the United States while they seek asylum. From January 2023 to May 2024, 119,000 Haitians made appointments via the application. We do not know how many were granted parole.

Wilda Brooks rallies with other members of South Florida's Haitian-American community to condemn hate speech and misinformation about Haitian immigrants, September 22, 2024, in North Miami, Florida. [Rebecca Blackwell/AP]
These programs give Haitians legal status in the United States

The Immigration and Nationality Act describes individuals granted temporary protected status as having and maintaining legal nonimmigrant status. The term nonimmigrant refers to people who are temporarily staying in the United States.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services states on its website that people granted compassionate parole or temporary protected status have lawful immigration status. Immigration law gives the executive branch the authority to grant these protections to people, said Jean Reisz, co-director of the University of Southern California's immigration clinic.

We asked the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency of the department, about the immigration status of people granted temporary protected status and parole humanitarian. We didn't get a response.

But immigration law experts said that once immigrants are granted temporary protected status, they are in the United States legally, regardless of how they entered the United States before to get it.

However, temporary protected status and compassionate parole do not provide people with a path to citizenship. Thus, individuals granted humanitarian parole or temporary protected status must use another route, such as asylum, marriage, or employment, to obtain legal permanent residency.

That leaves people with these protections in a precarious, non-permanent status that can expire or be terminated by the president, Reisz said. In November 2017, for example, Trump attempted to end the temporary protected status granted to Haitians. Legal challenges stopped the dismissal. Trump again promises to revoke Haiti's temporary protected status if elected.

If protections expire or end, people return to the status they had before those protections, said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. And people who don't have a legal basis to stay in the United States should leave the country or be deported, Reisz said.

But that expulsion would not be immediate, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law professor at Cornell University.

They would all be entitled to a deportation hearing before an immigration judge to determine whether they have a right to stay here, such as asylum, Yale-Loehr said. This could take years due to the backlog in immigration courts.

Vance, left, and Walz met on October 1, 2004 in New York in the only vice-presidential debate before the November U.S. elections. [Matt Rourke/AP]
Our decision

Vance said the immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are illegal immigrants.

City officials said most of the immigrants recently arriving in Springfield are Haitians. We don't know their immigration status, but officials said many of them are in the country on humanitarian parole and temporary protected status. These protections allow them to temporarily live and work in the country legally. According to immigration experts, humanitarian parole and temporary protected status are both considered legal statuses under immigration law.

Neither program allows people to stay in the United States permanently, but even if temporary protections are in place, they are not coming here illegally, immigration experts said.

We believe Vances' assertion to be false.

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