Like so many midwestern manufacturing-centric communities, Lima, Ohio, has dealt with slow-motion decline for decades. Famed for producing oil in the late 1800s and the Abrams army tank, its population has been on the wane since the 1970s.
But in recent years, the city has experienced a small turnaround.
A Procter & Gamble chemical plant east of the city has recently undergone a $500m expansion, adding more than 100 new jobs. Part of the chemical giant’s expansion has seen it donate tens of thousands of dollars in college scholarships to local students and millions of dollars to local road projects.
One 2024 real estate report suggested Lima was one of the hottest property markets in the country for young people.
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That’s despite states such as Ohio, Michigan and Indiana, once the heart of industrial America, finding themselves fighting a shrinking homegrown population.
Immigrants from Haiti such as Amos Mercelin, who is one of several thousand people from the devastated Caribbean country now living in the Lima area, have stepped in to fill the labor shortage.
“I worked first at a plastics factory, then I did 12-hour shifts at a Fedex [warehouse]. Now I work with a healthcare organization,” he says.
“It was hard, but I knew these were just first steps.” Many Haitians, he says, work at food production plants scattered around the area, where cold temperatures and harsh physical conditions are a part of the job.
But come August, when temporary protected status (TPS) for more than half a million Haitians is set to end following an announcement by the Department of Homeland Security on 20 February, that growth could be jeopardized. For Mercelin, thousands of other Haitians and the businesses that depend on them, that could be catastrophic.
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Cities such as Lima and Haitians such as Mercelin aren’t alone.
In a part of the country hit hard in the aftermath of the Great Recession, about 1,000 Haitians are believed to live in the Findlay area, a city 30 miles north-east of Lima, where one automotive company reportedly relies on immigrants for half its workforce.
Ninety miles to the south, in Springfield, about 15,000 Haitians have contributed to the city’s housing and financial revival. While the city’s property tax revenue was less than $800m in 2018, in 2023, it reached $1bn for the first time. Last year, it grew again, by 40%. While the property tax revenue increase has in part been fueled by rising property valuations, it also coincides with the growth in the number of tax-paying Haitians.
The Trump administration’s move to end TPS has led to worry among city officials in Springfield.
“They have strengthened our local economy by filling key roles in manufacturing and healthcare, even as their rapid arrival has strained public services and housing,” Springfield’s mayor, Rob Rue, a Republican, said in a statement.
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“I firmly believe in protecting our borders and reforming our immigration policies. Hasty changes and swift deportation will cause hardworking immigrants to be lost, negatively impacting our economy.”
In Lima, where Haitians have been blamed by some for rising rents and housing shortages, some are expressing similar concerns.
“I’m worried for our workforces if there should be a mass exodus [of Haitian immigrants] because some of our plants and factories need them,” says Carla Thompson, a city council representative.
“People are making money from renting to them, providing services, employing them. All of that is going to go away and those were jobs that our plants and factories needed filled. If we go back to the same population that we had, how do those jobs get filled in the future?”
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Voicemails and emails sent to several businesses in Lima, Springfield and Dayton – areas with broadly high levels of support for Donald Trump – known to employ Haitian immigrants were not responded to or comment was declined on whether they would be affected by the end of TPS for Haitians.
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A representative of a Springfield-based company that employed Haitian workers and whose owner faced death threats last fall at the height of the Trump-induced anti-immigrant controversy said its leadership had stopped taking media requests.
For Thompson in Lima, it’s not only businesses that could lose out if Haitians are forced to leave the country in August.
“I know the landlords have been loving it because I haven’t heard any complaints about [Haitians] not paying rent,” she says.
While larger midwestern cities such as Columbus, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh have mostly weathered the long-term regional population decline and the 2008 Great Recession that followed, smaller cities such as Lima, Springfield and Dayton have struggled.
Residents say that’s why the influx of immigrant communities in recent years seeking a low cost of living and plentiful job opportunities have played such an important economic role.
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Thompson says she got word from the mayor of Findlay that crime in areas that Haitians had moved to had fallen. But she believes there is a racist undertone to the plan to end the TPS program for Haitians, which the Department for Homeland Security claims “has been exploited and abused” for decades.
“The backlash against this group has been ridiculous and there’s no way in my mind that it’s not connected to the fact that they are brown-skinned,” she says.
“Racism has been an issue. Some people are probably excited that TPS is being stopped.”
For Mercelin, who has been in Lima for a year, the prospect of the end of TPS is disastrous.
“Some Haitians are talking about applying for asylum to help them stay here, but I can’t,” he says. “I have a daughter in Haiti and if I apply for asylum, it means I can’t go back there for something like seven years.
Ohio State University has reached a $100 million settlement with nearly 300 former students who had accused the school’s campus doctor of sexually assaulting them decades ago, the school and a lawyer for the victims said on Wednesday.
The settlement with 279 of the 280 former students was ratified by the university’s board on Wednesday. It followed years of litigation overaccusations of decades of abuse by Richard Strauss.
The abuse occurred from 1978 to 1998, the year he retired from the faculty.
“The mediation and its confidentiality are continuing as the parties work to finalize the details of the settlements, and additional information will be shared as appropriate,” the school and a lawyer for the victims said in a joint statement.
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In February, the university reached eight additional settlements, bringing the total to 304 survivors and more than $60 million.
Strauss, who killed himself in 2005, was employed by Ohio State’s athletic department and medical staff for nearly two decades.
A 2019 report detailing the investigative findings said that Strauss had sexually abused at least 177 men, nearly all of whom were students, and that university staff who knew of the abuse failed to act. The abuse included groping and fondling of the students’ genitals and other acts under the guise of a medical examination.
News of the investigation and its findings prompted more than 500 plaintiffs to sue Ohio State, alleging they had been sexually abused by Strauss and that the school had shown deliberate indifference.
Another state is jumping into the fray to put the brakes on non-domiciled CDLs, with roughly 5,000 commercial drivers in Ohio facing the potential of having their licenses downgraded.
On Friday, May 29, the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles announced it would be contacting approximately 5,000 non-domiciled CDL holders to verify the status of their credentials under updated rules from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
According to the Bureau, non-domiciled license holders in the state will receive one of two notices, depending on the type of documentation they initially used to obtain their CDL.
For drivers whose documentation meets current FMCSA standards, their licenses will remain valid until their expiration date. For those who do not meet current standards, the process is a bit more complicated.
As for CDL holders whose original documents do not meet current FMCSA guidelines, they will receive a notice of downgrade, and their CDLs will be downgraded to a Class D license 30 days after receiving the notice.
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Drivers who receive a downgrade notice can request a hearing with the BMV to dispute the downgrade, and can provide additional documentation to prove their eligibility. According to the Bureau, those documents include:
An unexpired Employment Authorization Document issued by USCIS, valid on the most recent CDL/CLP issuance date
An unexpired foreign passport with an unexpired USCIS I‑94 form, both of which must be valid on your most recent CDL/CLP issuance date
Officials said the Ohio BMV has not issued or renewed any non-domiciled CDLs since FMCSA put new standards in place in 2025, and that it does not intend to resume issuing non-domiciled CDLs in the future. Additionally, the BMV will not renew revalidated non-domiciled CDLs after they expire.
All notices will be sent by mail to the address listed on file with the Ohio BMV. The Bureau emphasized that the reverification process does not apply to full CDL holders or CDL holders with legally established permanent residence. LL