ALABAMA - Ever since former President Donald Trump and other Republican leaders pushed the false claim that Haitian migrants were stealing and eating pets, the full scope of public attention has befallen on the small city of Springfield, Ohio.
Such claims have resulted in at least 33 bomb threats been made in Springfieldand, according to worried parents, children are now living in fear. All of the threats made have been determined to be hoaxes. Some of them targeted Springfield schools, including elementary school campuses, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said on Sept. 17 at a news conference.
"Our children deserve to be in school. Parents deserve to feel that their children are being educated and that their children are safe," DeWine said.
Last week, students at Perrin Woods and Snowhill Elementary Schools in Springfield were evacuated after bomb threats were reported, while Roosevelt Middle School was closed prior to the beginning of the school day.
With children living in fear, NBC News is reporting that parents in the small Ohio city say some are scared to go to school. "They're unsure of what's going on," John Michael Moore said of his children. "These kids are like sponges. They're absorbing everything. We just wish it would stop," Moore said.
City police issued a statement saying that no credible reports have been received.
The rumor appears to have originated at an Aug. 27 Springfield City Commission meeting, in which local resident Anthony Harris alleged, among other things, that Haitian immigrants were killing park ducks for food.
The rumor also spread quickly on local crime-watch Facebook groups, where a member claimed that the neighbor's daughter's friend had lost her cat and found it hanging from a branch at a Haitian neighbor's home being carved up to be eaten.
The Springfield News-Sun reported that these viral posts had erroneously linked the city to an incident last month in Canton, Ohio, in which a woman was arrested and charged with cruelty to companion animals for allegedly killing and eating a cat.
Melanie Flax Wilt, the president of the Clark County Commission, said people in the community "are being stressed by the national attention that has been created and some of the security concerns that we've had."
She added that the situation has made it challenging to provide basic resources to the community, and that educators and first responders have now an added "level of strain and stress in responding in an environment that has put them in somewhat in a feeling of danger."
Sharice Otieno, another parent from Springfield, said that on Sept. 13, she was walking to school with her son when she heard from another family that there was a bomb threat. Otieno then called a friend of hers who is Haitian to tell her to pick up her child because of the threat.
"It was a very terrifying feeling. But I was also enraged, because I know that it is rooted in lies against the community that has shown me a lot of love," she said.
In recent months, the city of Springfield has seen a large number of migrants from Haiti coming in. According to estimates from a New York Times report, some 20,000 Haitians have arrived to the city under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, leaving their home country due to ongoing violence.
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