With Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian migrants set to expire on February 3, 2026, former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) — who is running for the U.S. Senate in 2026 — is calling on the administration to extend the designation, citing economic disruption in Ohio communities and the lack of a safe place for Haitians to return.
Former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown posted on X Friday morning:
As I travel the state, I hear the same thing that Governor DeWine has heard from Ohioans: they are concerned about their Haitian neighbors and about the economic impact the expiration of TPS for Haitian Americans will have on their communities.
That’s why I’m calling on the Administration to extend TPS for Ohio’s Haitian community now. Haitian Americans don’t have a safe place to return to in Haiti and our communities across Ohio depend on them to help our local economy thrive.
I’m calling on Governor Mike DeWine and Senators Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno to put Ohio communities first and join my call to extend TPS for the Haitian community.
Brown took questions from reporters at an affordability roundtable event on Friday afternoon. According to Andrew Tobias, a politics reporter for Signal Ohio who covered the event, Brown declared ICE “needs to be ‘radically redone’” and called for the firing of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Tobias also reported Brown stated, “Bringing ICE in means that these communities are less safe.”
Responding to Sherrod Brown’s call, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) — who unseated him despite a $194 million Democratic campaign — remarked:
You still don’t get it, do you @SherrodBrown? Voters are sick of liberal Democrats like you selling out American workers for cheap migrant labor every time. That’s why you got fired!
This isn’t hard: Temporary Protected Status was always TEMPORARY. Now it’s time to go home.
He doubled down on this stance in a recent interview with Statehouse News Bureau: “Everybody always knew the date, so we shouldn’t have to surge a force in there, to forcibly deport people who knew for a long time that they have to do that on their own.”
Moreno has criticized the $110,000-per-year burden per illegal migrant on taxpayers during a Breitbart News Daily interview, asserting that such spending eclipses what the average American earns annually. In that interview, he called the Biden administration’s immigration approach “abject insanity” and emphasized that migrants should only be admitted if they contribute economically without relying on government assistance.
Meanwhile, Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) has voiced concern that the expiration of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants could hurt Springfield’s economy. “Some of the economic progress that Springfield has made would go away,” he said in a December 2025 interview. DeWine added, “Employers tell me many of these, maybe most of these Haitians working there will no longer be legal,” warning that once TPS ends, “you’re going to have a lot of unfilled jobs.” He has argued that deporting Haitian workers would remove a labor force that local businesses have come to depend on.
As Sherrod Brown prepares for a 2026 Senate run against Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed to fill Vice President JD Vance’s seat, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has already branded him a “two-time loser,” anticipating another defeat following his loss in 2024.
In a 4,300-word postmortem of his failed reelection bid, Brown omitted any reference to mass migration or its impact on wages, labor markets, or Democratic Party alignment. Instead, he blamed free trade policies dating back to the 1990s for hollowing out working-class communities. Breitbart News’s Neil Munro noted that this silence reflects the party’s broader unwillingness to confront what he called a “disaster” for Democrats and a “boon for investors,” driven by Wall Street’s demand for imported workers, renters, and consumers.
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