Four months ago, then-presidential nominee Donald Trump repeatedly told his supporters a baseless lie that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating residents’ pets.
Now he’s President, and members of Springfield’s Haitian immigrant community are afraid he will make an “example” out of them as he promises to carry out mass deportations across the country, Politico reports.
The Trump administration has already begun carrying out Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids across the country, including in Chicago, Newark, Miami and Colorado. He has also taken several other steps to implement his hardline immigration agenda, including attempting to end birthright citizenship.
Marjorie Koveleski, a Haitian-American Springfield resident for decades who helps usher in the new arrivals, told Politico many are afraid mass deportations will start with them.
“They think they’re going to make Springfield the example,” she told Politico.
Brandon Sipes, a humanitarian crisis adviser for the Nazarene Compassionate Ministries in Springfield, told Politico 20-30 Haitian residents used to attend his church. Now, that number “just bottomed out,” he said.
“The few families that would come to church, they were very afraid,” he told Politico.
Trump’s rhetoric has taken its toll on the families that call Springfield home.
“This was very hard mentally, because at some points in time, people were afraid to come out or to go for groceries, to go shopping or anything,” Viles Dorsainvil, leader of Springfield’s Haitian Community Help & Support Center, told Politico. “That rhetoric was so negative that some folks in town left because they could not put up with all that pressure.”
Some 15,000 Haitian migrants have settled in the town under a program that grants temporary protected immigration status to individuals from countries the U.S. considers especially dangerous, including Haiti.
Last year, Trump, J.D. Vance and their MAGA allies repeatedly claimed immigrants were eating dogs and cats in the mid-sized town of some 58,000 people.
The theory – which city officials maintained there is no evidence for – was even discussed on the debate stage as Trump faced off against Kamala Harris. Debate moderator David Muir pointed out the claim was unfounded, but Trump doubled down.
The baseless claim appears to have originated from a post describing a fourth-hand account on a Springfield Facebook group. There is no evidence to support the theory and city officials have rejected the claim.
Trump’s rhetoric already disturbed the community last year, as schools and government buildings were targeted by dozens of bomb threats in the weeks after he promoted the baseless conspiracy. GOP governor of Ohio Mike DeWine, a Trump supporter, even penned an op-ed for the New York Times in which he defended the Haitian population.
“They are there legally,” he wrote. “They are there to work.” He also claimed the population has contributed to a “resurgence in manufacturing and job creation” in the town.
The Independent has contacted the Trump administration for comment.
