Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio, have spent the last week living in terror, their sense of normalcy upended by the wildfire-like spread of a right-wing conspiracy theory accusing them of killing and eating cats.
Their small city, just 45 miles west of the state capital, Columbus, has received more than 30 threats of violence in the week since former President Donald Trump repeated the false claim on the debate stage in Philadelphia. In the face of those threats, schools have evacuated and closed, local colleges have canceled on-campus activities and temporarily moved instruction online, organizers of the city's popular annual CultureFest have canceled the event and many Haitian residents have confined themselves to their homes out of fear for their safety.
"For now, I'm just careful because if I don't need [to go] outside, I don't go," said Evens Édouard, a Haitian resident of Springfield who works as a quality inspector for an automotive safety glass company in a nearby city. "I just go to drop my son at school and take him back, and then when it's time, go to work."
Édouard told Salon that he feels the U.S. citizens in his community have a "negative view" of their Haitian neighbors that they didn't have before the conspiracy theory's spread. While some still welcome migrant residents in the community and encourage them to ignore the vitriol, he said others approach them to ask if they actually do eat cats and dogs, or cast blame on them.
"I think we don't have the same value [to them], the same attitude [towards us], before we had this kind of speech about us," he said. "Now it's like they think we come here to take their jobs. We come here to eat animals, stuff like that. It's like we have a negative view in the town."
Alongside the fears ignited by shooting and bomb threats, Trump's Friday pledge to start mass deportations in Springfield should he be elected have also left other Haitians in his community worried about their immigration statuses, Édouard said. Some are making plans to move, while others are hoping to save money before leaving town, he added.
"I think everybody's scared," he said, adding: "If you're Haitian you're concerned. It's like feeling scared for everybody that's Haitian."
The disruption has left Springfield's thousands of Haitian residents trapped in a fresh hell created by far-right conspiracy theorists and neo-Nazis, the situation enflamed by their very own senator, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, and the former president. These attacks are also part of a broader right-wing effort targeting all forms of immigration, legal or not and spearheaded by Trump's commitment to large-scale deportations. Allegations of what Trump claimed at the debate to be widespread "migrant crime" have also spread, fueling debunked claims of Venezuelan gangs commandeering apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado, and most recently, dredging up falsehoods about African immigrants in Dayton, Ohio, another city some 70 miles west from the state capital, were grilling cats.
As the far-right conspiracy theories circulate and Trump and Vance continue to espouse anti-immigrant rhetoric, they further ostracize Springfield, Aurora and Dayton's immigrant populations, posing a threat to their safety and impacting their quality of life. That harm, experts warn, can reverberate out to other immigrant communities and people of color.
"Trump and Vance’s comments reflect the ongoing stigmatization of migrants through the lenses of race, illegality, and crime," Jamella Gow, a professor of sociology at Bowdoin University whose research focuses on how immigration, race, and Blackness intersect for Black migrants, told Salon in an email. "By casting Haitians (and other migrants of color) as potential or already criminals, they continue a tradition in immigration policy and rhetoric that divides citizens and non-citizens (real or imagined) and in doing so allows for the production of more stringent and harmful immigration policies that have deep impacts on communities."
Carl Lindskoog, a history professor at Raritin Valley Community College and author of "Detain and Punish: Haitian Refugees and the Rise of the World's Largest Immigration Detention System," said the xenophobic rhetoric serves to justify "both physical violence and exclusion," with white Americans encouraged to "take action" against a perceived threat to their way of life.
Several Springfield officials have spoken out to dispute the false claims about their community. The city manager and the city's police division have both said there is no credible evidence of Haitian immigrants harming or eating pets. On Sunday, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine further denied the claims, admonished the accusers and defended the Haitian migrant community.
"What we know is that the Haitians who are in Springfield are legal. They came to Springfield to work," DeWine told ABC's Martha Raddatz. "Ohio is on the move, and Springfield has really made a great resurgence with a lot of companies coming in. These Haitians came in to work for these companies."
Despite repeatedly being informed the claim was a lie, Vance and Trump both doubled down during a Sunday CNN appearance and Friday press conference in California, respectively, and further spread the claims.
Lindskoog speculated that the Republican candidates' purpose in boosting these baseless claims is energizing a political base that still responds to racism and xenophobia. The move is one of the "calling cards of Trumpism and Trump's politics," he argued, referencing Trump previously claiming immigrants crossing the border were "rapists" and referring to Haiti, El Salvador and various African nations as "shithole countries."
"It's the politics of fear," Lindskoog told Salon. "Anxious Americans who are concerned about issues of race and the economy and all these things respond to these lies, sometimes about immigrants and criminality. It's a long playbook going back a long time."
That playbook extends back to the anti-Chinese sentiment of the late 19th century, when politicians were making similar false claims and sparking "tragic incidents of mob violence" against Chinese communities, he explained. Those attacks also "paralleled" acts or racial terror against Black Americans other migrant groups.
"Spreading these lies and then doubling down on them is not just irresponsible, but it's very, very dangerous," Lindskoog said.
We need your help to stay independent
Despite the turmoil roiling in Springfield, Trump has dismissed the community's concerns over the threats, claiming they are but a distraction from the border. But the harm the falsehoods have brought to the city's Haitian residents in the aftermath of the debate has been immense.
One woman, granted anonymity out of fear of reprisal, told the Haitian Times that her vehicles had been vandalized twice in the middle of the night, having windows broken on one night and acid thrown on one of the vehicles during the other.
“I’m going to have to move because this area is no longer good for me,” she told the outlet last week. “I can’t even leave my house to go to Walmart. I’m anxious and scared.”
Sophia Pierrelus, a community activist who has assisted Haitian migrants in Springfield, told the Columbus Dispatch that the daughter of a woman she knows "hasn't gone to school since this happened because at the school the kids are asking her about eating cats and dogs." She added: "They're afraid to go into the street because they feel they may be attacked."
While Springfield's immigrant community is living through the immediate dangers posed by the rhetoric from Trump, Vance and other far-right Republicans, history suggests the impact will extend beyond the city's limits and affect other Black immigrants and migrants, Gow told Salon.
Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.
The "demonization" of Haitian's migration to South Florida, especially in the 1970s and 80s, led to the U.S. implementing harsher laws policing migrants fleeing their nation by sea, she explained. Working-class Haitians and Cubans were also the first to "systematically be detained" as part of that immigration policy. Those practices carried over into the current detention and deportation strategies used against Central American migrants in the last decade and employed under the Trump administration, including “Remain in Mexico” program and Title 42, "all of which made it difficult for all migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. to gain access."
"By focusing on migrants as the so-called problem, politicians can distract focus from the real problems people in the U.S. are facing such as access to affordable housing, consistent employment, and a fair cost of living," Gow added "Setting up migrants and Haitians as a well-trod 'scapegoat” allows politicians to skirt around real issues and ultimately make communities of color (migrant or not) less safe."
Trump and Vance's comments also must be understood as part of a longer history of the nation's attitude toward Haiti, she explained. "At the island nation’s founding, policy-makers and thinkers saw the nation and its people as 'dangerous,' 'rebellious' Blacks who (as evidenced by the U.S. occupation of the nation from 1915-1934 and later interventionist missions in the 20th century) are deemed necessary to occupy, “civilize” and control."
In Springfield, Haitian migrants comprise about a quarter of the population, amounting to over 15,000 of the blue-collar city's nearly 60,000 residents. The overwhelming majority live in the city legally, with many having settled there in recent years after receiving Temporary Protected Status (TPS) due to political turmoil, economic instability and environmental disasters in Haiti.
Haitians who've now built lives in Springfield were attracted to the area because of its relatively low cost of living and the wealth of employment opportunities bolstered by the city chamber of commerce's work to create jobs. City leaders have said the immigrant community has since boosted its economy and development.
As his community and city continue to grapple with the vitriol, Édouard said he wants the rest of the country to understand that when Haitians leave their country to settle in the U.S. and elsewhere, they do so in search of a "better life," of jobs and economic opportunities, and a safe place to build a future — not to participate in "bad activities" or crimes.
In Springfield, they've been able to build a community much like what they had in Haiti, he explained. That includes supporting each other, helping each other find work and bringing with them the richness of their culture, including the "culinary art" — one that he felt he had to emphasize does not include eating cats or dogs — while contributing to the fabric and the growth of the city they now call home.
"We are people," Édouard said. When other Americans see Haitians like him, he would like them to see "hard workers," he added. "That's it."
Shares