Brennan asked DeWine if he had talked to President Trump about the Haitian situation in Springfield. DeWine said he did not talk to the president about the issue but said his position on Temporary Protected Status for Haitians was clear.
“I think the policy to revoke that is wrong. I think there’s a consensus in this country. As we all have said, let’s get rid of the violent offenders. Get them out of here. I think there’s a consensus behind the need to do a good job on the border, and I think the president gets high marks for doing that on the- on the border. But once you get beyond that, I don’t think there’s a consensus for taking people who are working, who are supporting their family, and we’ve kind of seen it, almost in a micro way, with the Haitian community that’s come into Springfield. Springfield is an industrial city, manufacturing city that was down. It has been coming back. And frankly, one of the reasons it’s coming back is because of the Haitians who are working there,” said DeWine
DeWine went on to talk about comprehensive immigration reform and legal pathways to citizenship.
“I think the president has a chance to do something that no president has done for four decades. If you- if you would take that opportunity, and I think after the election, he’ll have a chance ... I just think the time is now right, because we’ve always said, we can’t do legal immigration because the illegal is such a mess and the border such a mess, and the president, frankly, has fixed the border. So I think it’s an opportunity for all of us to go forward.”
Brennan pushed back, saying “But respectfully, the president’s not talking about any of what you just laid out, particularly when he’s talking about Haitians in Ohio.”
DeWine replied, “Well I’m an optimist you know.”
Wrapping up the conversation, Brennan pressed DeWine on if he was doing anything to address the problem.
“Everyone remembers that campaign with the claim they’re eating cats and dogs. You’re talking about hard working people who are legally here and continuing to work,” said Brennan. “But are you making that clear to the president’s immigration team? Are you coordinating or anything? Because we hear the complaints that Democrats and Republicans are not coordinating.”
DeWine responded with more support for the immigrant community.
“Margaret, I don’t discuss my contacts with the president or what I tell the president, but I think the administration knows my position on this. And I think you know, if they were there, they would see that this has been good for our economy. It’s been good for our community. We have people who are fixing up houses, opening up restaurants, spending money and filling jobs that couldn’t be filled before. We need them in Ohio. We’re a state that as far as our influx of people coming into the state last year, 70% of those individuals were foreign born. They’re giving us vibrancy and helping us and the fact that they’re working creates other jobs frankly.”
DeWine was asked how tariffs were affecting Ohio.
“I think one of the things that we learned all of us who were governors at the time during COVID is that the supply chains, we got to make more and we’re not broken. We have to make more things back here in the United States, but I think that’s a general feeling of the public,” he said. “So I think as a manufacturing state, we’re seeing some new investment coming in. It’s hard to tell sometimes. Do you attribute it to the fact that they now have to be investing more and don’t want to have the tariffs or not? But my feeling is that we’re getting a lot that’s coming in because of those tariffs.”
Holly Souther contributed to this story.
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