Pierre Damas Bel had been a college student for eight days when he died. He was 20 years old, the oldest of three, and he had enrolled at Wright State University on August 24 to study physiology and neuroscience because he wanted to go to medical school. He had a GPS monitor locked to his left ankle the entire time.
Bel died Monday morning on Interstate 70 in Clark County, Ohio, after being struck by a tractor-trailer. His family believes he died by suicide. The Ohio State Highway Patrol is investigating and has not released a determination. His father, Pierre Ronal Bel, said his son called him on video at 8:03 that morning and told him he was not feeling okay mentally because of the bullying. His father told him to come home so they could talk. Police came to the door around 11.
Before that week, Bel’s life had been a straight line up. He graduated from Springfield High School in May 2026 as an honors student. He wore a JROTC uniform. He played varsity soccer for the Springfield Wildcats. The school district posted a photo of him receiving a scholarship on May 1, in a light blue suit and bow tie, smiling as he took the folder.
What changed happened between graduation and his first day of college. Bel had Temporary Protected Status, which is the program that lets people from countries in crisis live and work legally in the United States until their home country is considered safe again. Haiti has qualified for years because of the violence and collapse there. On June 25, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end Haiti’s designation, and the protections lapsed in late July. An estimated 350,000 Haitians lost their status.
Bel had already filed for asylum, which is a separate process and one that legally allows a person to stay in the country while it plays out. His hearing was scheduled for October. He was, by the rules, permitted to be here.
In July, immigration authorities summoned him to their offices anyway and fitted the monitor to his ankle. He was one of many Haitians in Springfield called in for the same thing. The Trump administration has been calling Haitian immigrants into ICE offices to be equipped with monitors and has sent two deportation flights to Haiti since the status was cancelled.
After that, the pieces of his life started falling off. He stopped wearing his JROTC uniform. He could no longer comfortably play soccer. On July 30, he posted about it on Instagram. “I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone,” he wrote. “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.”
“He felt like he was treated like an animal,” his father wrote in a handwritten statement. Speaking to the Haitian Times, he said that in his son’s last days he did not recognize him, describing Pierre as an energetic kid who loved life, friends, family, and education.
Springfield is a city of 60,000 people, and somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 of them are Haitian immigrants who came legally under TPS. It is the same Springfield that Trump falsely claimed during the 2024 campaign was a place where Haitians were eating people’s pets. The community there has spent two years absorbing what that attention brought.
Guerline Jozef of the Haitian Bridge Alliance called Bel’s death one of the most tragic outcomes of the administration’s treatment of the Haitian community. The Springfield City School District said it was heartbroken by the loss of a member of the Class of 2026.
Suicide is never caused by one thing, and researchers who study this are careful about that. What the research does show is that immigration enforcement itself produces measurable harm. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in March made the case that current immigration actions have created toxic stress for children that is likely to have lasting effects on their development and their physical and mental health.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Pierre Damas Bel’s asylum hearing was still five weeks away.
If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, available 24 hours a day.
