Racial tensions in Springfield have simmered for months. Trump’s rhetoric now has Haitians there in a full-blown ‘panic’
‘They call to know if it is safe for them to come out,’ one community leader told The Independent. ‘And we let them know, when they are going out, to be careful.’ Justin Rohrlich reports.
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Your support makes all the difference.After Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance helped supercharge a false, racist rumor that Haitian refugees in small-town Ohio were stealing and consuming people’s household pets, the fiction was duly parrotted by running mate Donald Trump during a nationally televised debate against Democratic opponent Kamala Harris.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” the former president insisted, wildly, at the Tuesday evening event. “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating, 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.”
A day earlier, the Trump-Vance campaign issued a press release baselessly accusing “unvetted” Haitians of consuming not only domestic animals, but hunting and eating local wildlife, such as ducks and geese, as well.
The compounding myths, which the leader of notorious neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe gleefully took credit for having helped popularize, were swiftly debunked by, among others, the Springfield mayor, city manager, and police department.
But the claims have not only inflamed existing tensions in Springfield, they have also managed to further traumatize a group of people who fled civil war and ceaseless gang violence for the sleepy Rust Belt town of 58,000.
“It’s creating so much panic in the community,” Springfield resident Viles Dorsainvil told The Independent. “... The words that come out of their mouths matter. They are looking for the highest office in America. They have the obligation to do better, because words are powerful.”
Dorsainvil, 38, emigrated to the US from Haiti in 2020 and moved to Springfield in 2021. He works for the county, processing people’s applications for public assistance, and last year founded the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, a tiny all-volunteer nonprofit, as a resource for new arrivals.
In the days since Vance and Trump seized upon the false narrative about Haitians feasting on cats and dogs, Dorsainvil said he has heard from parents afraid to send their children to school, new homeowners who want to sell and move out of state, and people too frightened to leave their residences.
One Haitian-born business owner in Springfield told a local reporter that her landlord was now trying to evict her from her commercial space, chalking the effort up to anti-Haitian sentiment.
“They call the center to know how it is out there, if it is safe for them to come out,” Dorsainvil said. “And we let them know, when they are going out, to be careful.”
Simmering hostilities toward Springfield’s Haitians boiled over last August, when a Haitian man driving without a valid license crashed into a school bus, killing 11-year-old Aiden Clark. The driver, who was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of the accident, was subsequently sentenced to a minimum of nine years in prison, on charges of involuntary manslaughter and vehicular homicide. In December 2023, 22-year-old Springfield resident Izaye Eubanks, who is Black, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for hate crimes against at least eight Haitians in the area.
In August, a dozen masked neo-Nazis from Blood Tribe marched through Springfield’s downtown, carrying assault-style rifles and swastika flags. Angry residents appeared at a town council meeting two weeks later to loudly decry the new stresses the rapid addition of up to 20,000 Haitians over the past three to four years — very quickly boosting the city’s population by as much as one-third — has placed upon schools, healthcare providers, and social services. They aired grievances about the federal government “dumping” immigrants on them, claiming, without any evidence, that Haitians are bringing crime and “scaring the females here in town.” One man, who the mayor had removed from the premises following his remarks, said he was a Blood Tribe member and that he had “come to bring a word of warning.”
“Stop what you’re doing, before it’s too late,” said the man, who identified himself using a pseudonym. “Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in.”
On Thursday morning, Springfield City Hall and other locations in the area were evacuated following a bomb threat sent to multiple city agencies and media outlets. On Friday, a pair of emailed bomb threats forced evacuations at two elementary schools and a middle school, which shut down for the day. No explosives were found at the schools or at any of the other locations listed in the threat, which included City Hall, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, and a third elementary school, Springfield authorities said in a news release.
‘All of this rhetoric needs to stop immediately’
Springfield’s Haitian residents, almost all of whom are in Springfield legally, in various immigration categories, feel a mixture of sadness and surprise about having become targets of the outrage, according to Springfield NAACP President Denise Williams.
“I want JD Vance to hear my voice — I need him to apologize to the city of Springfield, Ohio,” Williams told The Independent. “It is absolutely racist, up close and personal. That comment should have never been made at that level, without investigating it first… Please put this in bold letters, with quotation marks around it: All of this rhetoric needs to stop immediately.”
Ohio Lt. Gov. John Husted, who in January endorsed Trump’s bid to retake the White House, squarely blamed the Biden-Harris administration for the “overwhelming influx” of immigrants into the Buckeye State over the past four years.
How did they get here? Husted mused earlier this week in a series of posts on X.
In fact, it was his boss, Gov. Mike DeWine — his own 2022 re-election endorsed personally by Trump — who invited them.
“Dear Secretary Pompeo: The State of Ohio has a long and successful history of welcoming and assimilating refugees from all corners of the globe,” DeWine wrote in a December 2019 letter to Mike Pompeo, Trump’s then-secretary of state, as he and Husted wrapped up their first year in office. “Ohio also has a well-developed support network to welcome and assimilate refugees, primarily lead [sic] by our faith-based communities.”
“Given our ability to successfully welcome and assimilate legitimate refugees, and the administration’s stringent vetting process, I consent to the placement and/or resettlement of refugees within the State of Ohio,” DeWine’s letter concluded.
Five years prior, “Welcome Springfield,” a program helmed by an evangelical pastor and lifelong conservative Republican named Carl Ruby, was launched. It was an attempt to breathe new life into the city, and included a resolution declaring Springfield “a community welcoming of immigrants, and immigrant-owned businesses.”
Initially, the new residents were mostly South Americans, Ruby told The Independent. Haitians began arriving in significant numbers around 2019 or 2020, he said.
The population of Clark County peaked in 1971, and has been on the decline ever since. Businesses in Springfield closed, factories shuttered, and home prices cratered. The opioid epidemic hit the region particularly hard. Young adults moved elsewhere for opportunity, further depressing Springfield’s economy, according to Kathleen Kersh, an attorney at the nonprofit Advocates for Basic Legal Equality (ABLE) in nearby Dayton.
According to the most recent figures available, immigrants make up 5.1 percent of Ohio’s Congressional District 8, which includes Springfield, as compared to the national average of 13.6 percent.
“When you hear rhetoric that the people who are coming here are coming from mental institutions and jails, the people I meet with on literally a weekly, if not semi-weekly basis, are electricians, are doctors, are attorneys, are teachers, are human rights activists, are successful businesspeople,” Kersh, who provides free legal services to Springfield’s Haitian community, told The Independent.
There are also many blue-collar Haitian immigrants equally important to Springfield, according to Kersh, who pointed to a number of farms that have gone under in recent years “because of the difficulty in attracting workers to do these really difficult, strenuous jobs.”
To support the population increase, and to counterbalance the commensurate increase in the cost of housing, Springfield is now working with developers to increase its supply of residential stock, “a trend not seen in decades,” Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck said in a video address on Wednesday. Over the next few years, Heck went on, Springfield plans to add some 2,000 new residential units.
“While we are experiencing challenges related to the rapid growth of our immigrant population, these challenges are primarily due to the pace of the growth, rather than the rumors being reported,” Heck contended.
The city has appealed to the Biden administration for financial aid. At the same time, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced he has “directed his office to research legal avenues to stop the federal government from sending an unlimited number of migrants to Ohio communities.”
A coalition of community providers have monthly brainstorming sessions about how best to coordinate their efforts, Kersh said. Faith-based groups, as DeWine noted in his 2019 letter to Mike Pompeo, and as evidenced by Ruby’s efforts, are a large piece of the puzzle. Orchard Alliance, a Christian nonprofit headquartered in Colorado Springs, last year helped finance a move to a new facility for a Haitian church in Springfield.
“These Haitian immigrants face an uphill battle, often receiving public criticism for their presence in the city and accusations of criminal behavior — despite employers and city leaders acknowledging them as kind-hearted, hard-working members of the community,” Orchard Alliance exec Peter Burgo told The Independent.
A spokesman for the Springfield Police Department said he found it “sad” that opportunists had seized upon outright falsities to “spread hate and spread fear.”
“We get these reports ‘the Haitians are killing ducks in a lot of our parks’ or ‘the Haitians are eating vegetables right out of the aisle at the grocery store,’” Officer Jason Via told NPR. “And we haven’t really seen any of that. It’s really frustrating. As a community, it’s not helpful as we try to move forward.”
Basil Fett, who retired last year as choral director for the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, has lived in town since 1977 and said he felt Republicans were exploiting the Haitian community for political gain.
“If they can get these people whipped up and all fearful, they can maybe get people to vote for them,” Fett told Cleveland.com. “Instead of, ‘I’ve got answers for your problems,’ no, all they’re offering is fear, fear, fear.”
And Nathan Clark, whose son died in last year’s bus crash, spoke out following Vance’s and Trump’s comments, telling local politicians that the intense hatred now aimed at Haitians made him wish the driver involved had instead been “a 60-year-old white man.”
“Using Aiden as a political tool is, to say the least, reprehensible for any political purpose,” Clark said at a recent City Commission meeting. “They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members. However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio.”
On Thursday, Carl Ruby and a group of fellow pastors held a press conference to call for unity and to denounce racism and bigotry, which Dorsainvil said he found heartening.
“All that we can do is, let’s stay in solidarity,” Dorsainvil told The Independent. “Let’s work together. Let’s pray for each other. Let’s walk with each other. Let’s listen to each other. Let’s have good and meaningful conversation. Let’s raise our voice on behalf of the minority and the vulnerable. If we conjugate our force, our strength, and keep moving forward, that would be very great.”