By LUIS ANDRES HENAO, Associated Press SPRINGFIELD, Ohio (AP) — Roudechel Charpentier moved to Springfield in 2023 to escape the violence in his native Haiti, enrolled in college and got a part-time job at a fast-food restaurant. He’s been losing sleep over the Trump administration’s push to e nd the temporary protected status, or TPS, that allows him and roughly 350,000 other Haitians to live and work in the U.S. Although a judge intervened Monday to keep the protection in place while a lawsuit challenging the administration’s order plays out, Charpentier’s driver’s license was set to expire Tuesday, and he’s worried he might yet be forced to leave before he can graduate in May. “I’d think, after Feb. 3, I won’t be able to go anywhere,” said Charpentier, an agriculture technology major at Clark State College. Related Articles Clintons finalize agreement to testify in House Epstein probe, bowing to threat of contempt vote Trump demands $1 billion from Harvard as a prolonged standoff appears to deepen More departures at the US attorney’s office in Minnesota, AP sources say Trump’s $45 billion expansion of immigrant detention sites faces pushback from communities Trump hosts Colombia’s Petro just weeks after insulting him as a ‘sick man’ fueling the drug trade The Monday ruling by U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington came a day before the scheduled ending of TPS status for Haitians. Although it provided a reprieve, it’s an uneasy one. “Everybody is happy right now,” Charpentier said as he grabbed a meal before class at a popular Haitian restaurant in Springfield. “Everything is not done yet because we don’t have the final decision on TPS. But the situation is much better than last week.” The U.S. initially granted TPS to Haitians following the catastrophic 2010 earthquake that rocked their Caribbean island homeland, and the status has been extended several times since. TPS recipients are allowed to live and work in the U.S., but the status doesn’t provide a legal pathway to citizenship. The Homeland Security secretary may grant the designation if conditions in home countries are deemed unsafe for return due to a natural disaster, political instability or other dangers. Springfield is home to roughly 15,000 Haitians — a community President Donald Trump denigrated while running for reelection in 2024 by falsely suggesting they eat their neighbors’ cats and dogs. Many have grown up in the U.S., and they’re still worried about what their futures might hold. Hansmie Pierre, 22, hasn’t been back to Haiti since moving to Florida in 2007 at age 4. She said the uncertainty over TPS forced her to confront the idea that she might not get to see her new nephew in Jacksonville grow up. “I didn’t want to go to a country where I wouldn’t be able to come back and see my family,” she said. In addition to Haitians, Trump has aggressively sought to strip of TPS protections from other nationalities as part of his administration’s wider, mass deportation effort. They include about 600,000 Venezuelans, 60,000 people from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal, more than 160,000 Ukrainians, and thousands of people from Afghanistan and Cameroon. Some have pending lawsuits in federal courts. Pierre said the TPS program’s impacts permeate so many lives. “A lot more people are dealing with this than people realize,” Pierre said. “These are your co-workers. These are your friends. Sometimes people stay quiet because it could put them at risk. But it’s very real, and it’s often much closer than people think.”. Another Haitian national, who was granted anonymity due to fear that speaking publicly could jeopardize her immigration status, said she arrived in the U.S. as a baby and received temporary protective status as a teen. She has been back to Haiti only once, at age 7. “My whole life, people would say, ‘So you’re just American,’” said the woman, a Ph.D. candidate at an East Coast college. “But America doesn’t actually see you that way.” In her written opinion, Reyes said the plaintiffs’ lawsuit was likely to prevail on its merits and that she found it “substantially likely” that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem preordained her decision to end Haitians’ TPS status because of “hostility to nonwhite immigrants.” Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin denounced the ruling as “lawless activism.” “Haiti’s TPS was granted following an earthquake that took place over 15 years ago,” she said in a statement. “It was never intended to be a de facto amnesty program, yet that’s how previous administrations have used it for decades.” The administration could appeal or try to address the judge’s concerns in an attempt to overcome legal hurdles. During Trump’s first term, the president made three attempts at a travel ban before drafting one that passed legal muster in the Supreme Court in 2018. Trump initially proposed an all-encompassing Muslim travel ban but made adjustments as he faced court injunctions along the way. But the ruling suggests potential limits to Trump’s efforts to strip legal status from about 2.5 million people on TPS, humanitarian parole and other temporary and highly tenuous ways to remain in the country with work authorization. That number — referred to as “twilight status” in a recent report by the Migration Policy Institute — ballooned under the Biden administration. Many Haitians in Springfield worry that if their TPS status is ended, the administration might surge immigration officers to the city to begin rounding them up. Hours before the stay was granted, though, McLaughlin said DHS didn’t “have any new operations to announce.” Jean Philistin, a former teacher-turned-Springfield real estate agent, welcomed the decision for his Haitian friends and family living with TPS status. “If it wouldn’t have been for this court decision it would have been a disaster for the community because more than 350,000 people carry that status,” said Philistin. A recently released preliminary Bureau of Labor Statistics survey showed that the Springfield area lost 1,100 jobs between December 2024 and December 2025. In North Miami Beach, which has about 18,000 Haitian residents, Mayor Michael Joseph said “God sent relief” in the form of the judge’s Monday ruling. But he said anxiety persists in his community over the prospect of a government appeal. “The fever still persists,” he said. “It gives some type of stability, but at the same time you don’t know when the next hammer or the next shoe is going to fall.” Guillaume reported from New York. Associated Press reporters Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio; Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City; Gisela Salomon in Miami; and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report. ...read more read less