Republicans split with Trump and back Haitians – to save their seats

F or months Carl Ruby, a pastor at a church in Springfield, Ohio , and a prominent supporter of the city’s estimated 10,000 Haitian immigrants, had been trying to contact his local congressman, Republican Mike Turner. Ruby had long hoped for an opportunity to explain in person the difficulties facing Haitians in Springfield and how that community had helped revive the struggling town. “I hadn’t gotten anywhere in getting an appointment with him; all his staff were putting us off,” Ruby recalls. But then recently, while he and Viles Dorsainvil, who runs the Haitian Community Help & Support Center in Springfield, were at a gate at a local airport waiting to board a flight to Washington, there appeared Turner, waiting to board the same flight to the capital. Ruby and Dorsainvil, a plaintiff in a case heard last Wednesday by the supreme court, challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to end temporary protected status for 350,000 Haitians and thousands more Syrians, decided there and then to approach Turner to attempt to talk about the situation facing Haitians. The response they got from the congressman, who faces an election in November, surprised them. “He clearly understands the economic benefit of having immigrants here. He clearly is not on the same page with many members of his party who are willing to step back and let the president do whatever he wants,” Ruby says. …