A Republican Governor Breaks With Trump Over Haitian Deportations
Ohio's Mike DeWine says ramping up removals of Haitian migrants would send people 'back to hell'
By Nathaniel "Beltway" Steele
Mike DeWine has spent decades inside the Republican Party. He is not in the habit of publicly rebuking a president of his own party. He did it anyway.
In an interview with CBS News' Camilo Montoya-Galvez, the Ohio governor called the Trump administration's plan to ramp up arrests and deportations of Haitian migrants "a mistake." His reasoning was blunt. "Haiti is hell today," DeWine said. "So you'd be sending people ... back to hell."
DeWine's objection is not purely humanitarian. Ohio has become home to a sizable Haitian population in recent years, concentrated in cities like Springfield, where employers have come to rely on Haitian workers under Temporary Protected Status. DeWine argued the deportation push could hurt the state's economy, according to CBS News.
The administration's plans, first reported by sources speaking to CBS News' Major Garrett, would intensify enforcement against Haitians even as conditions in Haiti remain dire — the country has struggled for years with gang violence, political collapse, and a collapsing state. New CBS News polling this week also found President Trump underwater with the public on his handling of foreign policy questions tied to the region, though the survey's scope on Haiti specifically was not detailed in the reporting reviewed here.
Whether DeWine's public break carries any weight with the White House is an open question. He has no formal role in shaping federal immigration policy, and his comments, delivered in a sit-down interview rather than a floor speech or lawsuit, are more caution than confrontation. But they are a marker: a sitting Republican governor, on the record, telling a Republican president that a signature immigration move is wrong.
Read the footnotes. The story's always in the footnotes.
— Compiled from reporting by CBS News, including interviews conducted by Camilo Montoya-Galvez.
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