As Trump rallies his base in Ohio, a Haitian migrant is laid to rest nearby

Mourners blamed Pierre Damas Bel's death on President Donald Trump's deportation campaign. Trump's supporters said ICE needs to do more.

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio -- As Pierre Damas Bel's father watched his firstborn's casket being lowered into a grave, President Donald Trump's supporters were arriving to hear him speak at a high school 25 miles away.

The two events -- one cloaked in anguish, the other jubilant -- occurred within hours of each other Saturday in southwestern Ohio. They offered starkly different visions of how Trump's immigration crackdown is affecting America.

To Haitians in Springfield, whom Trump accused of eating pets during his 2024 presidential run, Bel is a casualty of his mass deportation campaign. Bel, a 20-year-old college student, stepped in front of a truck in late August after the administration canceled the temporary immigration status that had allowed him and hundreds of thousands of other Haitians to remain in the country. Immigration officers had outfitted Bel with an ankle monitor to track his whereabouts, which, he wrote, made him feel humiliated.

"Our mourning extends beyond one family," Vilés Dorsainvil, a Haitian community leader, told several hundred people at the funeral. "It is also a moment of reflection for the Haitian community and all immigrants."

To Trump's supporters, Haitians like Bel should never have been allowed to settle in the United States and are victims of their own choices. Several voters at the rally in Dayton said the president's hard-line policies on immigration are precisely what they had hoped to see after record-breaking illegal migration under the Biden administration.

"My heart goes out to him and his family," said Blake Marnell, 62, who had traveled from San Diego to listen to Trump speak. "I think it's unfortunate that he made that decision. But, if you are in the country illegally, you have to go."

"They allowed 25 million people to pour across our border from prisons, from mental institutions, drug dealers, and if they win the midterms, they will do it again," he claimed, greatly exaggerating both the number of migrants who crossed the border during the Biden administration and where they came from.

Trump won Ohio in the last three presidential elections. But this fall, Democrats have a chance to win back a Senate seat and secure the governor's office for the first time in decades. Previously reliable red districts are now toss-ups, polls show. And voters in the battleground state are signaling a willingness to look past the GOP as the Trump administration grapples with low approval ratings and discontent over rising costs triggered by the war in Iran.

The Saturday rally drew more than 4,000 people to the Butler High School gymnasium in Vandalia, a Dayton suburb. Vendors outside sold caps with "ICE" emblazoned across the front in support of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A rallygoer yelled "Deport them all!" as Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) spoke.

Some rallygoers knew of Bel's death. Others did not. Several said it did not change how they viewed Trump's immigration crackdown. They said anyone who is in the country illegally should be removed. Mick Michmerhuizen, a 19-year-old college student from Oxford, Ohio, said immigration remains his main concern. He said ICE officers could be doing more.

"They have the right to take temporary status away," he said.

Trump brought up Springfield during his remarks and recited a version of "The Snake," a song by civil rights activist Oscar Brown Jr. in which a woman dies after being bitten by a snake on which she took pity and invited into her home. The president has told the story at multiple rallies since 2016, this time casting the more than 12,000 Haitians settled in Springfield during the Biden administration as the snake.

"It didn't work out too well," he said.

Inside the sanctuary of St. John Missionary Baptist Church earlier that day, mourners said Haitian newcomers like Bel had, in fact, brought hope back to a flagging Rust Belt city.

"You are a blessing, not a burden, to our community." pastor Carl Ruby said. "We do not want you to be ripped away."

Ruby said Bel's story echoes that of another young man whose death helped fuel the civil rights movement. "The truth is that like Emmett Till, Pierre Damas died under the weight of a racialized system that did not provide him with equal liberty and equal justice."

More than 250 family members and friends attended the service, in which people shared emotional testimonies about a young man who they said was generous and hardworking. He helped his stepmother fill out job applications, translated emails for his father and was an example to his younger siblings. Speakers also advocated for legislation to reinstate temporary protected status for Haitians.

A projector scrolled through enlarged images of Bel's brief life, including a smiling photo of him in his royal blue cap and gown adorned in honor cords. The same graduation image was overlaid across his golden coffin.

In the church foyer, the family had framed grim artifacts of Bel's violent death: a ripped wallet, warped identification cards and the road-scarred remnants of his mobile phone. They were arranged next to letters of support from people extolling the virtues of his character for his immigration case.

Bel came to the U.S. in 2024 to reunite with his parents, who had fled Haiti three years before. ICE said its records show he entered through CBP One, the mobile app the Biden administration established for immigrants to enter the country at a port of entry and request asylum. He was later granted temporary protected status and graduated from high school in May with honors and as a proud member of the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps, his father said.

Bel had enrolled at Wright State University and in late July wrote administrators hoping for their help in obtaining a student visa. He also had a pending asylum application. He was outfitted with an ankle monitor after the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to proceed with canceling temporary protections shielding Haitians from deportation.

"I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn't come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone," he wrote on Instagram. "Yet now I'm walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience."

Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican who is term-limited and leaves office in January, sat through the service as sobs erupted sporadically during the remembrances. Relatives described Bel as possessing the attributes -- grit, integrity and work ethic -- that have long been valued of immigrants to this country.

"We need people like Pierre Damas Bel," DeWine, who has called the president's decision to terminate TPS for Haitians a mistake, said in an interview. "This is a personal tragedy, but it is also a tragedy for our country."

Back at the rally, attendees who had heard of Bel's death said they did not believe Trump's immigration crackdown should be blamed.

"I don't know that there's an exact correlation between him wearing an ankle monitor and him taking his own life," said Sherrie Foster, of Troy, Ohio. "Logical people that have a support system don't take their own life."

Bel's father hasn't slept in a bed since his son died. He lies on the floor of his home as a penitence of sorts, he wrote in a statement read during the funeral.

All he feels, he said, is emptiness.