SPRINGFIELD – The Amos Project grieves today, alongside the family of Pierre Damas Bel, the Haitian community of Springfield, and every Ohioan forced to watch a 20-year-old honor student be treated like a criminal by his own government. 

Pierre graduated from Springfield High School this May with honors. He wore a JROTC uniform. He was the co-captain of the varsity soccer team. He had just begun his first week as a neuroscience and pre-med student at Wright State University, pursuing his dream of becoming a doctor. 

He was a son. A brother. A scholar. An athlete. A neighbor. A child of God. 

We mourn his loss. 

We will not soften what happened by calling it a “tragedy.” A tragedy is something that befalls us. What happened to Pierre was made. It happened within a system and under policies that treated him and other Haitian immigrants as threats rather than human beings worthy of dignity and protection.

The Amos Project names President Trump, Stephen Miller, and Markwayne Mullin as responsible for the policies that created the conditions leading to this premature loss of life. We will not look away. We will not be silent. And we will not allow Pierre’s death to be reduced to a footnote in history. 

Pierre and other Haitian immigrants were summoned to immigration authorities to be fitted with ankle monitors. This 24-hour electronic GPS monitoring comes with shame, humiliation, and indignity. That mantle of indignity follows a person to work, to school, to church, to the soccer field, and home. 

For Pierre, that burden was compounded by the harassment and fear that accompanied it. He was made to carry the weight of suspicion despite having no criminal conviction. He was made to live under a sentence of guilt while being innocent. 

This is what the immigration policy looks like in the body of a child of God. 

We need to be perfectly clear here: what happened to Pierre was not random and abstract, but rather a direct, predictable, documented outcome of a deliberate policy of cruelty. The federal government’s treatment of Haitian immigrants in Springfield did not begin with an ankle monitor. It began with rhetoric that dehumanized Haitian people and portrayed immigrants who had built lives in our communities as threats.

That dehumanization has consequences. 

The framework they are using to execute this cruelty is white Christian nationalism. Their tools of surveillance, criminalization, public shaming, and deputizing ordinary citizens into vigilantism are not new. These are the same instruments used against Black Americans, against Jews, against every community this country has decided is disposable. We refuse to accept that history repeating itself is inevitable. 

Pierre Damas Bel had his entire life ahead of him. He had the grades, the discipline, the service record, the dream. The only thing standing between him and a white coat was a piece of metal bolted to his leg by his own government.

Pierre was not disposable. Haitian lives are not disposable. Immigrant lives are not disposable. No child of God is disposable.

We mourn Pierre. We stand with his family. We stand with the Springfield Haitian community. And we will continue to name the policies and fight against the policies that put our neighbors in harm’s way. 

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