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A business owner in Springfield, Ohio and his family have received graphic death threats after defending his Haitian employees from Donald Trump's racist smears.
Jamie McGregor, 48, who employs about 30 legal Haitian immigrants at his vehicle parts factory, had spoken out in September after Trump and his allies began spreading false claims that Haitians in Ohio were eating people's pets.
“They come to work every day. They don’t cause drama. They’re on time,” McGregor told The New York Times, saying that the migrants had taken up crucial positions that he’d been struggling to fill after expanding his business.
Now the Times reports that strangers have been threatening McGregor and his family in the most lurid terms, as well as putting up posters near the factory that declared him a “traitor”.
"Why are you importing Third World savages who eat animals and giving them jobs over United States citizens?" one voicemail asked.
Another message declared that it would be "100 per cent justified" if McGregor took "a bullet to the skull", while yet another offered a graphic fantasy of McGregor being crushed to death by a pile of Haitian bodies.
Many of the messages came from neo-Nazis and white supremacists, the Times reported.
The deluge prompted McGregor to take his family to safety training and shooting classes, and to buy a firearm to keep in his house – despite his long discomfort with such weapons.
"I can’t imagine living my whole life like this," said McGregor's wife Cameron. "You know, it’s got to end. It’s got to stop – hopefully after the election."
Numerous schools and colleges were forced to close due to bomb threats and other safety risks earlier this month after the Trump campaign decided to make a target out of Springfield's most recently-arrived immigrant group.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, thousands of Haitians who were granted a temporary right to remain in the US due to the bloody civil war on their country have moved to Springfield, responding to a campaign by local leaders to attract new workers to the once-struggling town.
Then, based on shaky or zero evidence, Trump, his running mate JD Vance, and other conservatives alleged a plague of pet-eating in the mid-size midwestern city.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets,” Trump declared during the September presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
McGregor, reportedly, a lifelong Republican who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, now says that he would not do so again.
