GOP governor of Ohio, home to 10K Haitians, calls TPS ruling ‘a mistake’

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) expressed concern about the implications of the Supreme Court’s Thursday ruling in Mullin v. Doe, which authorized the Trump administration’s efforts to strip certain humanitarian protections from Haitians and Syrians residing in the U.S.

“Today’s decision is a legal decision. As I have stated in the past, the policy to remove these individuals from this country is a mistake,” DeWine said in a statement.

The governor said that more than 10,000 Haitians residing in Ohio under the temporary protected status (TPS) program could soon be eligible for “immediate deportation” as a result of the ruling.

The TPS program shields citizens from select countries from deportation and provides them with a pathway to work authorization. The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is responsible for adding nations to the TPS list based on concerns over ongoing armed conflict, environmental disasters, an epidemic or “other extraordinary circumstances,” according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

While the high court’s decision specifically applies to citizens from Syria and Haiti, the ruling is likely to have implications for people from other TPS-protected nations. The Trump administration has threatened to strip TPS protection from 13 out of 17 countries on the list.

As of March 2025, 330,735 Haitians were protected under TPS, according to the CRS.

“The situation in Haiti could hardly be much worse,” DeWine said in his statement. “The violent gangs run most of the country. The government barely functions. And, the economy is in shambles.”

DeWine noted that the U.S. government has placed a travel advisory for Haiti. The Central American nation is designated as “Level 4: Do not travel” by the State Department over risk of crime, terrorism, kidnapping, unrest and limited healthcare access.

The country was first added to the TPS list under the Obama administration following a devastating earthquake in 2010, and its designation has been renewed under previous administrations because of security concerns about social unrest in the nation.

Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation in September 2025, leading to the ensuing court battle over humanitarian protection for the population.

DeWine has publicly pushed back against the Trump administration’s efforts to revoke TPS status from Haitian citizens who reside in his state.

“If they lose temporary protected status and they no longer can work and the companies can’t employ them, that’s a blow to the economy, that’s a blow to the state,” DeWine told CNN’s Dana Bash in February.

Many Democrats have warned that the ruling will have bleak consequences for immigrant populations in the U.S. DeWine joins a small number of Republicans in his opposition to the court’s decision.

Following the TPS ruling’s announcement Thursday, GOP Rep. Mike Lawler (N.Y.) said that the decision will “create a crisis,” pointing to the thousands of Haitian TPS holders working in the healthcare sector.

“I’m asking the administration to allow for an orderly process by which Haitian TPS holders can maintain their work authorization while their immigration cases are adjudicated over the next six months, if the revocation of TPS moves forward,” Lawler wrote on the social platform X.

The White House celebrated the court’s decision as a “tremendous win for the Trump administration” in a Thursday statement shared with The Hill.

“Today, the Supreme Court affirmed what President Trump has always maintained: temporary protected status is, by definition, temporary,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson wrote.

“It was never intended to be a pathway to permanent status or legal residency and it is committed to the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security,” she continued. “The Trump Administration continues to lawfully end the egregious abuses to our immigration system that have hurt Americans for years.”