A Haitian migrant facing deportation took his life by throwing himself in front of a tractor-trailer truck, immigrant rights activists said Tuesday, blaming the Trump administration’s “dehumanizing” policies for his death.
Pierre Damas Bel said he was humiliated by having to wear an ankle bracelet to monitor his whereabouts as a condition for being released from ICE detention while his deportation case proceeded.
He had been part of a deportation amnesty, the Temporary Protected Status granted to Haitians, but the Trump administration ended it last month after a favorable Supreme Court ruling in June.
Mr. Bel stepped into traffic on Interstate 70 in Springfield, Ohio.
“I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone. Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg,” he posted on social media a month ago.
“How am I supposed [to] play college sports with a GPS monitor on my leg?” he added.
His suicide quickly became a rallying point for immigration groups, which portrayed him as a martyr to President Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
“It’s sickening that the Trump administration took Haitian Americans’ legal status away, and is putting them in chains,” said Lynn Tramonte, executive director of Ohio’s Voice.
Mr. Bel’s father said in a note posted to social media that his son had pleaded with authorities to remove the GPS bracelet so he could play soccer. The father also said his son was bullied by classmates, who called him a criminal.
The GPS ankle bracelet is part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s alternatives to detention program. It allows migrants in deportation proceedings to be monitored without being held in detention.
It also usually means those migrants wait longer for their case outcomes — which, for someone eventually ordered deported, means they get more time in the U.S.
ICE said Mr. Bel came to the U.S. in March 2024, using the Biden administration’s CBP One app. That was a program that allowed migrants to pre-schedule their arrival and, even though they lacked a legal visa, they earned a quick catch-and-release into the country.
He was placed on the ankle monitor a little more than a month ago, on July 29.
ICE declined to comment on the circumstances of his death other than to say it was notified by the Ohio State Highway Patrol.
But the deportation agency said for Mr. Bel to remain in the U.S. was “a choice.”
“No one is required to stay in the United States illegally and wear a monitor. Illegal aliens have a lawful, voluntary option: they can self-deport through the CBP Home app,” ICE said in a statement.
Mr. Bel graduated earlier this summer from Springfield High School and had started attending Wright State University in Dayton. He planned to study neuroscience.
Haitian migrants surged into the U.S. during the Biden administration and many of them ended up in Springfield.
Their presence became headline news in 2024 when Mr. Trump claimed they were eating pets — a statement with scant evidence to back it up.
The Springfield News-Sun said Mr. Bel parked his 2006 Toyota Avalon on the right shoulder of the interstate, then walked into the lanes of traffic.
He was struck by the truck and died at the scene.
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