ICE in Alabama yank Haitian father from minivan as kids watch, traumatizing family

What began as an ordinary morning in Birmingham, Ala., for Tyshiana Toussaint and her family quickly turned into a nightmare last 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 family fears may end with his deportation to Haiti.

“It was just like a regular morning,” Tyshiana Toussaint recounted during an interview with The Haitian Times Thursday. “He picks me up, we come out of the parking deck, [and] right when we’re about to turn the corner, we get blue-lighted.”

The couple had just left the hospital where Tyshiana Toussaint, a nursing student, had finished an overnight shift. Within moments, multiple unmarked vehicles surrounded the couple’s minivan. One vehicle pulled in front of the family’s Dodge Caravan and backed toward it, penning the family in. Several men in jeans and khakis then approached the driver’s side.

“They immediately come to the car and they say, ‘Reginald Toussaint, you’re under arrest for being in the United States,’” Tyshiana, 31, recalls.

A confused and alarmed Reginald, 43, tried to tell them he has Temporary Protected Status (TPS). The program allows about 350,000 Haitians to live and work legally in the U.S.

“He pulls out his wallet and he’s like, ‘I need to call my lawyer,’” Tyshiana said. “They say, ‘Get out the car. I’m not going to keep telling him again.’”

What followed, she said, felt less like an arrest and more like an abduction. 

“They just yanked him out of the car. They reached inside of my car and opened the door and drug him out of it,” she said. “It happened so fast. It was like, ‘is he being kidnapped?’ ‘Is this a prank?’”

Their children—ages 11, 2, 1 and three months old—were in the backseats of the Dodge Caravan. The older two had begun crying.

Tyshiana got out of the car and started recording with her phone. When she asked questions, they answered with threats to take her to jail too, she said. They gave her his phone, but kept his wallet.

Minutes later, her husband was gone.

“I screamed all the way home,” she said. “I just screamed.”

Life with a precarious status 

Reginald Toussaint arrived in the U.S. in 2021 on a tourist visa. He was granted TPS in 2022, along with the program’s accompanying employment authorization documents (EAD) so he could work legally. He and his wife, who is African American, were also in the process of adjusting his status through petitions for permanent residency. 

Reginald Toussaint’s heavy-handed arrest is a dreaded reality for immigrant families as the Trump administration pursues mass deportation. Agents’ dismissal of Reginald’s status as a TPS holder also speaks to the ripple effect of attempts to end the program on the everyday lives of recipients. 

In the months leading up to his detention, according to his Tyshiana, Reginald Toussaint lost his corrections officer job because the state made being a U.S. citizen a requirement for the role. When he got a commercial truck driver job, the administration’s announcement that TPS would be terminated in February caused that employer to fire him since he would lose the work authorization tied to the program’s end date. 

Then, when a federal judge stayed the program in February, the motor vehicle department refused to renew his driver’s license because that too was linked to the work permit’s end date, and clerks there did not have new guidance.  

“He was doing everything right,” Tyshiana lamented Thursday, during the phone interview. “They did not care.”

According to ICE, however, Reginald Toussaint did break the law when he applied for a pistol permit in August 2025. In a federal court filing dated March 17, seven days after the arrest, an ICE Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO) officer, Daniel J. Finn, said that in Reginald Toussaint’s application for the pistol permit, he checked the ‘yes’ box in response to the question ‘are you a U.S. citizen?’

The application listed Toussaint’s place of birth as Graysville, Ala., according to Finn, and had a phone number registered to the TPS holder, his social security number and other identifying information.

Tyshiana disputes the accusation, saying her husband does not have a criminal record and that ICE went digging to find something to deport him. She also noted that his identification marks him as a non-citizen.

“It’s absolutely false,” she said. “He needed his identification to even pick up a permit. His license has “foreign national’ [FN] on it. They are trying their best to make him out to be a terrorist or danger to society.”

ICE/ERO did not say in the court filing why they stopped the family on March 10 in the first place nor why it took seven days to bring the impersonation charge. However, advocates point out, the government has begun targeting immigrant commercial drivers in their deportation push.

Reginald Toussaint’s attorney has since filed a motion seeking his release on bond on conditions that he will not be subject to an ICE detainer. Such agreements are increasing in use nationwide to take immigrants arrested on criminal charges into ICE custody for deportation, before their case is resolved.

“[This] Court should release Mr. Toussaint on a $5,000 unsecured bond with the least-restrictive set of conditions necessary to reasonably assure he will not fail to appear in court or pose any danger to the community based on his own volitional acts,” defense attorney Mia Gettenberg wrote in her motion.

“Because the crime with which Mr. Toussaint is charged [impersonation] is not a listed charge under [the statute],” she stated, “in order to seek or hold a detention hearing, the Government must show or the Court must find “a serious risk” either that Mr. Toussaint “will flee” or “will obstruct or attempt to obstruct justice.”

A hearing set for March 20 could determine whether he is released or returned to immigration custody, she said. But the family’s future remains unclear.

“Honestly, we thought he was going to come home,” Tyshiana said. “Now it’s looking scary.”

‘They treated me like I killed somebody’

Since his arrest, the mother-of-four has worried about her husband’s emotional state. When Reginald was able to call her from jail, she said his voice was filled with pain.

“He was just crying,” Tyshiana said. “He was like, ‘I don’t have anywhere to go. This is my family here. They’re treating me like I’m nothing.’”

She said he described harsh treatment.

“They treated me like I killed somebody,” he told her, according to Tyshiana. “They had my wrist too tight, they’re starving me.

“He’s just like, ‘What am I supposed to do?’

The emotional toll has rippled through the family. Her 11-year-old son was so shaken after witnessing the arrest that he couldn’t stay in school that day. 

At home, Tyshiana is now juggling nursing school, childcare and mounting legal uncertainty—all without her husband, the family’s primary breadwinner. So far, she has spent about $3,500 for legal representation.

For now, she is focused on holding her family together and supporting her husband from afar.

“I told him, ‘You’re not going to be alone regardless of what they decide,’” she said. “We’re just going to try to figure this thing out.”

But the pain—and uncertainty—remain.

“It just hurts,” she said.

Tyshiana says her husband’s case should serve as a warning to others with TPS.

“They are not caring about TPS,” she said. “They didn’t even ask to see it.”

Her advice: Be prepared.

“Make sure you have your A-number. Don’t roll your window down until you have all of your paperwork,” she said. “Know your rights, and make sure you’re recording at all times.”

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