Uncertainty and fear of being deported drove a 20-year-old Haitian college student to take his own life.
Pierre Damas Bel immigrated from Haiti to the United States to reunite with his Haitian parents in Ohio in 2024.
On Monday, Aug. 31, Pierre stepped in front of a tractor-trailer on Interstate 70 in Clark County, Ohio. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to the Ohio State Highway Patrol, he had parked his car on the shoulder and walked into the Westbound lanes of the highway.
Pierre’s family blames the Trump administration for his death by suicide.
He had no criminal history and had applied for asylum in the United States.
In November 2025, President Donald Trump’s administration announced it would end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians.
Pierre and other Haitian immigrants were ordered to wear ankle monitors by immigration officials.
Immigration attorneys filed federal lawsuits to delay the deportations, but in June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could move forward with terminating TPS protections for more than 350,000 Haitians living in the United States.
Haitians stayed home from work and school to avoid ICE agents.
Before his death, Pierre took to his Instagram account to vent his frustration about the ankle monitor he was forced to wear.
“I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone,” he said on Instagram in July. “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.”
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said in a statement to theGrio that Pierre’s death was “tragic evidence” that Trump’s “racist, dangerous termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians is dehumanizing, dramatic, and deadly.”
He did nothing wrong, and yet this administration stripped him of his dignity and humanity by forcing an ankle monitor on him and threatening his deportation just for being Haitian,” said Pressley.