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Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, denounced in a heartfelt op-ed the onslaught of attacks by Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, against Haitian migrants in Springfield that have made the city the “epicenter of vitriol over America’s immigration policy.”
This month, Trump and Vance perpetuated groundless claims that Haitian migrants to Springfield, Ohio, were stealing and eating residents’ cats and dogs. Despite city officials and police officers calling the claims unsubstantiated, the allegations spread like wildfire and Springfield endured a barrage of threats, while the city’s migrant community faced racist remarks.
In an emotional op-ed in The New York Times on Friday, DeWine said it was “disappointing” that the 58,000-person city “has become the epicenter of vitriol over America’s immigration policy, because it has long been a community of great diversity.”
“Our people and our history deserve better than to be falsely portrayed,” he wrote.
He laid out the city’s history of “providing refuge for the oppressed and being a place of opportunity,” serving as a stop on the Underground Railroad and as a place that welcomed immigrants, who “helped build the city into what it is today.”
Although the city experienced economic hardship in the 1980s and 1990s, it is now bouncing back, in part because of “the dramatic influx of Haitian migrants” who have come to Springfield over the past three years to fill jobs. He made it clear: “They are there legally. They are there to work.”
The governor then took a jab at the former president and Vance, an Ohio senator, both of whom DeWine noted he supports. While he believes immigration is a “very important issue,” Trump and Vance’s “verbal attacks” against Haitian migrants “dilute and cloud what should be a winning argument about the border.”
These attacks have been going on for weeks. On September 9, Vance posted on X that “reports” indicated that “people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.” Days later, at his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump repeated the baseless claim: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats ... They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
On Wednesday, the former president doubled down on the claims, telling a Uniondale, New York, rally crowd that Haitian migrants were “destroying our country.” Meanwhile, Vance suggested that even though he understood that Haitian migrants came to America legally, “I’m still going to call them an illegal alien.”
“I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield,” the governor wrote. “This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there.”
Their inflammatory remarks have sparked chaos and fear across the Springfield community. Bomb threats have led to school closings and the lockdown of a hospital.
“The Springfield I know is not the one you hear about in social media rumors. It is a city made up of good, decent, welcoming people,” DeWine wrote.
He painted a picture of Haiti — calling the gang-rife, violent country “one of the poorest, most dangerous places on earth” — in an effort to help Americans understand why Haitians are fleeing their home country and coming to places like Springfield, which have offered them a safe place with work opportunities.
The governor said the influx of migrants has not come without challenges. But he was referring to language barriers, cultural differences, and a strain on health care, the housing market and schools due to Springfield’s population increase, not the false claims that Republicans have been spewing.
“Springfield today has a very bright future,” DeWine wrote. “I am proud of this community, and America should be, too.”
