Last month, Pierre Damas Bel started his first year at Wright State University with the kind of future his family had crossed borders to imagine.
The 20-year-old, an honors graduate of Springfield High School in Ohio and JROTC member who emigrated from Haiti in 2024, planned to study neuroscience, play soccer, and eventually attend medical school.
Months before college began, he celebrated that path on Instagram: “Proud of the journey from Haiti to here,” he wrote, “and ready for the next chapter at Wright State University studying Neuroscience.”
But in the weeks before classes started, Bel’s life was overtaken by a new reality tied to his immigration status: a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ankle monitor.
“I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone,” Bel wrote in another Instagram post in July. “Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience.”
Family members and immigrant-rights advocates say students at Wright State taunted Bel about the device during his first days on campus. On Monday morning, according to a handwritten statement by his father, Pierre Ronal Bel, his son called home and said he was not “feeling OK mentally because of the bullying.” His father told him to come home so they could talk.
Hours later, the police came to the father’s door with devastating news: Bel had entered westbound traffic on Interstate 70 and was struck by a tractor-trailer. His family says he died by suicide.
“The government treated my son like an animal,” his father wrote.
For Springfield’s Haitian community, Bel’s death is not the first example of the Trump administration’s policies harming their community, advocates said. The small Ohio manufacturing city is home to an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 Haitians, many of whom fled political violence, economic collapse, and insecurity in Haiti.
In 2024, the city became a national target after false claims that Haitian residents were eating pets spread online and were amplified by JD Vance, then the Republican vice presidential candidate. Residents have since faced heightened harassment, public suspicion, and fear over their immigration status.
Bel’s ankle monitor came after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way in June for the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for more than 350,000 Haitians. TPS had allowed recipients to live and work legally in the United States while Haiti remained in crisis. The rollback placed people like Bel at risk of losing work authorization, being detained or deported — and, in Bel’s case, being subjected to electronic monitoring.
Since June, the Trump administration has directly called for Haitian immigrants to be equipped with ankle monitors, and began sending Haitians back on deportation flights.
Advocates argue that the policy change cannot be separated from the country’s broader treatment of Black migrants. While Black immigrants make up a relatively small share of the nation’s noncitizen population, they are disproportionately swept into detention and deportation proceedings. Haitian migrants have faced particularly severe barriers in the immigration system, including longer detention and higher bond amounts, according to immigrant-rights advocates and legal researchers.
Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance in Ohio, said in a statement about Bel’s death: “This is one of the most tragic outcomes of the Trump administration’s cruel and inhumane attacks on the Haitian community.”
“This administration is fully responsible for the tragic death of young Damas Pierre, who told his father that he could no longer bear the stigma that comes with having this ankle monitor device on his foot,” he added.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, called Bel’s death a “horrible, horrible tragedy” and said ending TPS for Springfield’s Haitian residents was “misguided and wrong.”
On Monday evening, community leaders gathered at the Bel family’s home to comfort his parents. Residents have also mobilized across Springfield to support their Haitian neighbors and demand that ICE halt its intensified actions targeting the community.
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