Gov. Mike DeWine said he is preparing for a potential increase in federal immigration agents in Ohio who may arrive as soon as next week with Springfield as a possible location.

President Donald Trump’s administration on Feb. 3 is ending a temporary protected status for Haitians with thousands of them living and working in Springfield, which was in the spotlight during the 2024 presidential race when Trump, a Republican, falsely claimed Haitians there were eating cats and dogs.

During a Tuesday interview with this newspaper, DeWine, a Republican, said the policy is “a bad decision. Our country loses a lot when we have people like this who want to work and we tell them they can’t work and we tell employers you cannot hire them.”

DeWine said he’s met with law enforcement and government officials with Springfield and Clark County to offer the assistance of the Ohio State Highway Patrol to back up local police if Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials send agents there. DeWine stressed that he doesn’t know if ICE agents were coming to Springfield.

Federal immigration agents fatally shot a Minnesota resident on Saturday, 17 days after killing another resident. Both were U.S. citizens.

DeWine said: “I just say to all our citizens, we have to follow the law. I would say to ICE, people are allowed to demonstrate too. So there’s that balance there. They have a right to demonstrate. They have a right to have an opinion. They have the right to voice that opinion. They have a right to take pictures. They have all of those rights. We will approach this from a law enforcement perspective in trying to keep people safe and that’s what I believe will, in fact, happen.”

He added: “It’s important for me as governor to talk about following the law. It’s important for me to say, ‘Look, we have to protect people’s constitutional rights to demonstrate, to talk, to do things like that.’ Also, whether we like it or not, whatever we think of the policy, it’s not our decision. It is a decision by the federal government and we have to respect that even if we may not agree with that decision.”

ICE was in Columbus and the surrounding area Dec. 16-21 with reports of agents returning earlier this month.

TAXES

DeWine said the legislation he signed into law Dec. 19 will put an end to “dramatic spikes” in property tax increases that occurred in Ohio in recent years.

DeWine signed into law five property tax bills that will save homeowners more than $3 billion over the next three years, change how millage is counted for school districts and permit county budget commissions to control levy amounts.

“I think we’re on a very good pathway at this point,” he said. “I think we got a great start on this. Are there other things that could be done? Yeah, possibly. But I think with what the Legislature has done and the bills that I signed into law, you will no longer see the dramatic spikes that go up like a rocket. That’s the biggest concern people have. There’s more transparency with levies and bond issues people will vote on. There may be an appetite in the Legislature to do more, but I think that what has been done is very, very significant.”

DeWine said he has concerns about a grassroots effort to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot to eliminate property taxes, saying its passage would devastate local communities. If the proposal makes the ballot, DeWine said he will work to convince voters to reject it.

“Those who favor it owe it to the people of the state to say, ‘How is my local police department going to get paid? How are my local fire and EMS, where is the money for that going to come from? Where is the money for my local school going to come from?'”

DeWine said state officials are doing calculations to determine how much more in income taxes and / or sales taxes people will have to pay if property taxes are eliminated. But he said he expects it to be high.

“Ohioans will discern what that really means,” he said. “You can’t take an action like that in a vacuum.”

Also, DeWine dismissed talk of eliminating the state’s income tax, which brought in close to $10 billion in Ohio’s last fiscal year. That is about one-third of the state’s revenue.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the presumptive Republican gubernatorial candidate who DeWine endorsed, has called for the eventual elimination of the state’s income tax though has said it won’t be immediate.

DeWine said in the seven years he’s been governor, not one of the hundreds of business officials who he’s talked to about coming to Ohio has ever brought up the state’s income tax, which has been reduced four times during his administration.

DeWine said: “There’s not one of them, not one CEO who said, ‘Your income tax is too high. It’s a problem for us. It’s a problem for us. It’s a problem for my executives. It’s a problem for me.’ Not one time.”

As for those who said the state needs to get rid of its income tax, DeWine said, “If you can figure out how to pay for education, pay for fire, pay for police, pay for mental health, pay for the things that make us a strong, competitive state, show me.”

When reminded that Ramaswamy wants an eventual elimination of income taxes in Ohio, DeWine said, “You can talk about getting rid of the income tax, but the question is: how do you replace it? We are very competitive. No one’s saying we can’t come here because we can’t pay your tax.”

DEATH PENALTY

There hasn’t been a single death penalty execution in the state with DeWine as governor. He issued a moratorium because of the inability of Ohio — and other states – to use safe execution drugs for lethal injections.

DeWine said he will address the issue in “the near future,” likely a few weeks.

“This is a question that mankind has wrestled with for centuries, millennia, on and on and on,” DeWine said. “People have very strong opinions on both sides about this.”

DeWine said he has looked at how long it took between convictions and executions from years ago “just trying to see exactly the state of capital punishment in this country and the state of Ohio. That’s what I’ve been doing — taking a hard, hard look at that.”

DeWine said when he was in the state Senate years ago, he served on the Judiciary Committee, which passed the state’s current capital punishment law. He supported it.

Asked if he’s evolved since then, DeWine said, “Sure, we all evolve in what we know and we evolve in how we see things actually work. I’ll share my opinions, but ultimately this is something that people will decide.”

DeWine said the state Legislature “can certainly” make that decision or “they can leave it up to the people of the state to decide. Someone’s going to have to decide.”