Two Republicans, One TPS Ruling — A Governor Says “Reconsider,” a Cabinet Secretary Says “Temporary Means Temporary.”

On June 25, 2026, the Supreme Court cleared the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for roughly 350,000 Haitian nationals and several thousand Syrians. Within three days, the political fight over what to do with that authority had broken out inside the Republican Party itself.

On the same Sunday morning, two Republicans went on television and pulled in opposite directions. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) urged the administration to “reconsider,” warning that stripping status from Haitian workers would gut his state’s labor force and hollow out the factory town of Springfield. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), the former Oklahoma senator, defended the termination by pointing at the program’s own name: the “T,” he reminded CNN’s Jake Tapper, stands for temporary.

This page is about the fight over implementation, not the legal holding. The Supreme Court’s ruling itself — what the 6–3 decision in Mullin v. Doeactually held — is covered separately. Here, the question is narrower and more human: now that the administration can end Haitian TPS, should it, and what happens to the people and the towns caught in between.

• ~350,000 — Haitian TPS holders the administration is now cleared to strip of status, plus roughly 6,100 Syrians · Source: CNN; Newsweek
• “Reconsider” — what Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) urged the Trump administration to do, on CNN's State of the Union, June 28, 2026 · Source: Washington Examiner; The Hill
• “Temporary means temporary” — DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) reminding Jake Tapper what the 'T' in TPS stands for · Source: Daily Caller; Mediaite
• ~12,000–15,000 — Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio — a city of about 60,000 — where DeWine says the loss would be a 'job killer' · Source: PBS NewsHour; WCPO
• ~$2,100 — the self-deportation payment DHS says it will offer TPS holders, alongside a plane ticket, to return home · Source: Newsweek; Mediaite
• July 1, 2026 — the date around which the Haiti and Syria protections were set to lapse after court-ordered extensions expired · Source: USCIS; CNN

The Supreme Court’s decision handed the administration the power to end Haitian TPS; it did not settle whether doing so was wise. That is the gap the politics rushed to fill — and the most striking voices were not Democrats but Republicans disagreeing with each other. On June 28, 2026, both Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) appeared on CNN’s State of the Union, and they framed the same ruling in incompatible terms.

DeWine, a former U.S. senator and attorney general now in his second term as governor, treated the question as economics and self-interest: Ohio needs these workers, Haiti is dangerous, and pulling tens of thousands of employed people out of the workforce would damage the state. Mullin, elevated from the Senate to run the Department of Homeland Security, treated it as a matter of statutory honesty: a temporary program was never meant to become a permanent one, and the people affected had years to change their status.

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DeWine’s argument is almost entirely about labor. Speaking to PBS NewsHour, he called the TPS rollback a “job killer for Ohio” and a “job killer for Springfield,” saying companies had told him they were able to add a second shift, take on bigger projects, and sell more goods because Haitian workers filled jobs that otherwise went empty. One reason Springfield was “coming back,” he argued, was precisely the workforce the ruling now threatens.

On CNN, he widened the lens from factories to care homes. “It’s Haitians who many times are taking care of your mom or your dad who has Alzheimer’s,” DeWine said, “taking care of family members who might be in a nursing home. And to say we’re going to pull all those out, it’s just not in our own self-interest.” He paired the economic case with a safety point that cut against the administration’s premise, calling Haiti “worse than it has, frankly, ever, ever been” and saying it was not safe to send people back.

“To say we're going to pull all those out, it's just not in our own self-interest.”

Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH), CNN's State of the Union, June 28, 2026

Mullin’s defense leaned on the program’s design. “Temporary Protected Status was never intended to be permanent,” he told Tapper, arguing that holders “could have applied for a visa” or for lawful permanent residence during the years — in some cases 15 or 20 — they had been in the country. When Tapper pressed on whether ending the program meant deporting more than 350,000 people to a dangerous country, Mullin cut in: “Is there a question in that?”

He laid out a logistics answer where DeWine had given an economic one. The administration, Mullin said, would offer TPS holders a path: apply for permanent status, accept a temporary visa, or take a plane ticket and roughly $2,100 to self-deport. For those who stayed, he pointed to deportation flights that “can get into areas where maybe commercial travel can’t go.” Where DeWine saw a workforce, Mullin saw a status that had simply reached its expiration date.

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No place embodies the stakes like Springfield. A manufacturing city of roughly 60,000, it became home to an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 Haitians over recent years — many of them legally present under TPS, drawn by warehouse and factory jobs. Rev. Carl Ruby of Central Christian Church put the demographic shift bluntly: “When Haitians arrived, that was the first time we grew in half a century.” The community became nationally visible in 2024 when then-candidate Trump amplified a debunked claim that Haitians there were eating residents’ pets.

After the ruling, Springfield residents rallied outside city hall in support of their Haitian neighbors. TPS holders described a community in limbo — unsure whether to keep going to work, whether employers would keep them on payroll, even whether to drive. Viles Dorsainvil, a Haitian community leader, called the day of the decision “one of the saddest days since coming here.” DeWine, who counts more than 10,000 affected Haitians in Ohio, has called the termination a “mistake” for exactly the place his own party’s administration cleared the way to change.

The scale is the part both men agree on. Roughly 350,000 Haitians and about 6,100 Syrians hold the status the administration is now cleared to end; CNN’s broader count of every TPS termination the Court has now blessed puts the universe of people newly exposed to removal above one million. The protections for Haiti and Syria had been extended by court order through about July 1, 2026, meaning the practical clock on work authorization and deportation relief was already nearly run out when the decision landed.

The administration’s offer — apply for another status, or take roughly $2,100 and a flight home — reframes the choice as voluntary. DeWine’s reply is that the math does not work for Ohio: employers lose the workers, care homes lose the aides, and Springfield loses the population growth that reversed a half-century of decline. The dispute is not really about whether the program is “temporary” on paper. It is about whether a status millions built lives around can be unwound without a cost the governor says his state cannot absorb.

The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a clean win on Haitian TPS. What it could not settle was whether the administration should spend that win — and the loudest doubt came from inside the Republican Party. Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) wants a reconsideration on labor and humanitarian grounds; Secretary Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) wants enforcement on the plain meaning of “temporary.” Roughly 350,000 Haitians, several thousand Syrians, and a single Ohio factory town sit between the two positions. We’ll track how DHS implements the terminations, whether the administration carves out any exception for places like Springfield, and how the remaining constitutional claims fare in the lower courts.

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Last updated June 28, 2026