Overview:
An Alabama household is grappling with trauma and uncertainty after ICE detained Reginald Toussaint, a Haitian TPS holder, whereas he was choosing up his spouse from work. Tyshiana Toussaint describes her husband’s chaotic arrest, witnessed by their youngsters, ongoing authorized challenges and the emotional and monetary pressure of his detention.
What started as an peculiar morning in Birmingham, Ala., for Tyshiana Toussaint and her household rapidly became a nightmare final week when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took her husband into custody. The nightmare continues to unfold as her husband, Reginald Toussaint, faces an allegation of impersonating a U.S. citizen in an escalating case the household fears might finish together with his deportation to Haiti.
“It was similar to a daily morning,” Tyshiana Toussaint recounted throughout an interview with The Haitian Instances Thursday. “He picks me up, we come out of the parking deck, [and] proper once we’re about to show the nook, we get blue-lighted.”
The couple had simply left the hospital the place Tyshiana Toussaint, a nursing scholar, had completed an in a single day shift. Inside moments, a number of unmarked automobiles surrounded the couple’s minivan. One car pulled in entrance of the household’s Dodge Caravan and backed towards it, penning the household in. A number of males in denims and khakis then approached the motive force’s aspect.
“They instantly come to the automotive they usually say, ‘Reginald Toussaint, you’re beneath arrest for being in the US,’” Tyshiana, 31, recollects.
A confused and alarmed Reginald, 43, tried to inform them he has Short-term Protected Standing (TPS). This system permits about 350,000 Haitians to stay and work legally within the U.S.
“He pulls out his pockets and he’s like, ‘I must name my lawyer,’” Tyshiana mentioned. “They are saying, ‘Get out the automotive. I’m not going to maintain telling him once more.’”
What adopted, she mentioned, felt much less like an arrest and extra like an abduction.
“They only yanked him out of the automotive. They reached within my automotive and opened the door and drug him out of it,” she mentioned. “It occurred so quick. It was like, ‘is he being kidnapped?’ ‘Is that this a prank?’”
Their youngsters—ages 11, 2, 1 and three months previous—have been within the backseats of the Dodge Caravan. The older two had begun crying.
Tyshiana received out of the automotive and began recording along with her telephone. When she requested questions, they answered with threats to take her to jail too, she mentioned. They gave her his telephone, however saved his pockets.
Minutes later, her husband was gone.
“I screamed all the way in which house,” she mentioned. “I simply screamed.”
Life with a precarious standing
Reginald Toussaint arrived within the U.S. in 2021 on a vacationer visa. He was granted TPS in 2022, together with this system’s accompanying employment authorization paperwork (EAD) so he might work legally. He and his spouse, who’s African American, have been additionally within the strategy of adjusting his standing by petitions for everlasting residency.
Reginald Toussaint’s heavy-handed arrest is a dreaded actuality for immigrant households because the Trump administration pursues mass deportation. Brokers’ dismissal of Reginald’s standing as a TPS holder additionally speaks to the ripple impact of makes an attempt to finish this system on the on a regular basis lives of recipients.
Within the months main as much as his detention, in keeping with his Tyshiana, Reginald Toussaint misplaced his corrections officer job as a result of the state made being a U.S. citizen a requirement for the function. When he received a business truck driver job, the administration’s announcement that TPS can be terminated in February brought about that employer to fireside him since he would lose the work authorization tied to this system’s finish date.
Then, when a federal decide stayed this system in February, the motorcar division refused to resume his driver’s license as a result of that too was linked to the work allow’s finish date, and clerks there didn’t have new steering.
“He was doing every part proper,” Tyshiana lamented Thursday, in the course of the telephone interview. “They didn’t care.”
In accordance with ICE, nevertheless, Reginald Toussaint did break the legislation when he utilized for a pistol allow in August 2025. In a federal courtroom submitting dated March 17, seven days after the arrest, an ICE Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO) officer, Daniel J. Finn, mentioned that in Reginald Toussaint’s utility for the pistol allow, he checked the ‘sure’ field in response to the query ‘are you a U.S. citizen?’
The applying listed Toussaint’s native land as Graysville, Ala., in keeping with Finn, and had a telephone quantity registered to the TPS holder, his social safety quantity and different figuring out info.
Tyshiana disputes the accusation, saying her husband doesn’t have a legal report and that ICE went digging to search out one thing to deport him. She additionally famous that his identification marks him as a non-citizen.
“It’s completely false,” she mentioned. “He wanted his identification to even choose up a allow. His license has “overseas nationwide’ [FN] on it. They’re making an attempt their greatest to make him out to be a terrorist or hazard to society.”
ICE/ERO didn’t say within the courtroom submitting why they stopped the household on March 10 within the first place nor why it took seven days to carry the impersonation cost. Nonetheless, advocates level out, the federal government has begun targeting immigrant commercial drivers of their deportation push.
Reginald Toussaint’s legal professional has since filed a movement searching for his launch on bond on situations that he won’t be topic to an ICE detainer. Such agreements are rising in use nationwide to take immigrants arrested on legal fees into ICE custody for deportation, earlier than their case is resolved.
“[This] Court docket ought to launch Mr. Toussaint on a $5,000 unsecured bond with the least-restrictive set of situations essential to fairly guarantee he won’t fail to seem in courtroom or pose any hazard to the group based mostly on his personal volitional acts,” protection legal professional Mia Gettenberg wrote in her movement.
“As a result of the crime with which Mr. Toussaint is charged [impersonation] just isn’t a listed cost beneath [the statute],” she acknowledged, “with a purpose to search or maintain a detention listening to, the Authorities should present or the Court docket should discover “a severe threat” both that Mr. Toussaint “will flee” or “will hinder or try to hinder justice.”
A listening to set for March 20 might decide whether or not he’s launched or returned to immigration custody, she mentioned. However the household’s future stays unclear.
“Truthfully, we thought he was going to return house,” Tyshiana mentioned. “Now it’s trying scary.”
‘They handled me like I killed someone’
Since his arrest, the mother-of-four has nervous about her husband’s emotional state. When Reginald was in a position to name her from jail, she mentioned his voice was stuffed with ache.
“He was simply crying,” Tyshiana mentioned. “He was like, ‘I don’t have anyplace to go. That is my household right here. They’re treating me like I’m nothing.’”
She mentioned he described harsh remedy.
“They handled me like I killed someone,” he instructed her, in keeping with Tyshiana. “They’d my wrist too tight, they’re ravenous me.
“He’s similar to, ‘What am I presupposed to do?’
The emotional toll has rippled by the household. Her 11-year-old son was so shaken after witnessing the arrest that he couldn’t keep in class that day.
At house, Tyshiana is now juggling nursing faculty, childcare and mounting authorized uncertainty—all with out her husband, the household’s main breadwinner. Up to now, she has spent about $3,500 for authorized illustration.
A information for the Haitian group on figuring out your rights and getting ready for interactions with ICE brokers.
For now, she is targeted on holding her household collectively and supporting her husband from afar.
“I instructed him, ‘You’re not going to be alone no matter what they resolve,’” she mentioned. “We’re simply going to attempt to determine this factor out.”
However the ache—and uncertainty—stay.
“It simply hurts,” she mentioned.
Tyshiana says her husband’s case ought to function a warning to others with TPS.
“They don’t seem to be caring about TPS,” she mentioned. “They didn’t even ask to see it.”
Her recommendation: Be ready.
“Ensure you have your A-number. Don’t roll your window down till you might have your whole paperwork,” she mentioned. “Know your rights, and ensure you’re recording always.”