Springfield has been at the center of the national immigration conversation, with false rumors about Haitian residents eating pets around the 2024 presidential election painting a picture about immigrants as a whole “founded on lies and intentional mistruths about these people,” Chloe Reep said.
“In our chance to speak for ourselves, we wanted a unified voice based on truth and the facts of what these people have actually brought to our community for the microcosm of Springfield but also for the larger conversation of immigration, which is, yes, these people do need us; they need our stability, the safety we can provide them, the jobs we can provide them, but they bring so much to us as a country and to our city,” she said.
Chloe Reep said the couple wants it “on the record” what Springfielders think about Haitian immigrants, giving residents a chance to speak for themselves, based on facts.
With Haitian immigrants facing the loss of the legal status allowing them to stay in the country, and Springfield residents bracing for potential Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, Jason Reep said they wanted to do something to help decision-makers do what is right and based on facts.
Much of the opposition to the petition and to Chloe Reep’s opinion piece in the News-Sun, that presented the same arguments as the petition, is “based on lies and misinformation,” Chloe Reep said.
Given the fact that the couple has a more conservative background, Jason Reep said it was important for the petition to cross partisan divides.
“We really wanted the petition to be able to speak to them and to be something that is disarming of the partisan rhetoric and encourage and enable people to engage with that community in a more honest way,” he said.
The petition emphasizes the fact that Haitian immigrants with TPS are here legally, with the program providing a legal status for immigrants to live and work in the country while conditions in Haiti remain dangerous.
“With this termination our Haitian neighbors will go from legal and working to illegal, unemployable, and at risk of deportation,” the petition reads.
Temporary Protected Status, the legal way in which many of Springfield’s 10-15,000 Haitians are in the country, was previously set to end after Tuesday, after the Biden administration extended it, but the Department of Homeland Security announced an official termination would happen Sept. 2, 2025, saying that conditions in Haiti had improved and its immigrants no longer meet the conditions for TPS.
A federal judge last year ruled that ending TPS was unlawful, blocking the program from ending early. TPS is still set to expire after Tuesday, as of now. Multiple lawsuits challenging the ending are ongoing.
If TPS status for Haitians is not renewed, hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants in the country will be living here illegally.
Many Haitians do not feel that they can safely return to Haiti, and American-born children of Haitian immigrants are at risk of separation from their parents without passports. Even then, many are considering leaving their children behind rather than take them to such a dangerous country, Jason Reep said, while acknowledging he would make the same considerations as a father.
The Reeps met with Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine earlier this week to share their petition and said he was “receptive and supportive.”
DeWine said at a press briefing Friday that the federal decision to cancel TPS is a mistake, pointing to the conditions in Haiti and the local impacts to the economy and community.
“The gangs are controlling a good part of the country, it’s extremely violent, the economy’s in shambles, the government does not function, the police are virtually worthless, so this is a very, very dangerous place. It doesn’t qualify as the situation changing for the better in Haiti,” DeWine told the media. “But probably more important for the United States and the people of Ohio, is that the Temporary Protected Status, if it goes away next week, it’s going to mean that you have thousands of Haitians who are working, contributing members of the community, contributing to the economy, who one day will be able to work and the next day will then not be able to work.”
He said the “upward movement” in Springfield and Clark County’s economy in recent years is in part due to the growth in the Haitian population.
The couple both grew up in Springfield and attended Cedarville University before they moved around the east coast for several years. They returned to Springfield in part to be involved in the “positive effort” toward improving the city, Jason Reep said. Chloe Reep has been involved in English as a Second Language classes and the couple has met many Haitian residents through church and other personal involvement.
“It all came together, very organically, our interest in this community kind of evolving into advocacy for them because, like Jason said, we love Springfield, very proud to be from here and we always, even though we knew after college, we were going to move away for a time, we always knew we wanted to come back and if we were going to contribute long term anyway, we wanted it to be to Springfield and to its economy, its community, its churches,” Chloe Reep said.
The Reeps knew what they wanted to do in December at the town hall after Mayor Rue asked “the silent majority” to speak up.
“I’ve heard it a lot over the last year-and-a-half, ‘There’s a silent majority, Rob, and we’re staying with you, we’re staying with the commission, we’re staying with you,’” Rue told the crowd in December. “But let me tell you, it’s time to be silent no more.”
“I appreciate the encouragement, and I’m not by nature an activist...but I am a man who’s been faced with a lot of adversity and because of [attitudes toward] diversity, and I want to tell you that it is time for the intelligent voices, the people who understand the entire issue, to speak and not be silent anymore, because the loud voices in the smaller group are really loud,” he said.
Most petition signers are local, with 93% of supporters as of Wednesday being within Ohio, 54% in Springfield and 91% within a 50-mile radius of the city, Jason Reep said. He said the couple hopes to continue capturing “the local sentiment voice.”
The petition can be viewed at actionnetwork.org/petitions/springfield-speaks.
Statehouse reporter Avery Kreemer contributed to this report.
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