circleWhile Donald Trump made unfounded and dangerous claims about immigrants in Ohio eating people’s pets in front of millions of viewers during Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Johnson Salomon, a Haitian who moved to Springfield in 2020, was watching cartoons with his kids before tucking them in to bed.
He got an email from a friend inviting him to watch the debate, and when he saw the headline about the former president, who was the Republican nominee in November’s election, he was totally shocked.
“This is a false allegation. I cannot believe that such a senior official could make such a claim,” Salomon said.
Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance, Elon Musk and prominent Ohio Republicans had already spread false rumors about Haitian immigrants killing and eating people’s pets in Springfield, a blue-collar town of 60,000 in western Ohio, but they didn’t start the rumors that led Salomon and other Haitians to fear they would be targets of violence and discrimination.
The videos were initially spread online in August on a social platform used by far-right extremists and the neo-Nazi hate group “Blood Tribe.”
Springfield authorities and police said they have not received any credible reports of members of the immigrant community harming pets, suggesting rather that the story may have started in Canton, Ohio, where an American woman with no known ties to Haiti was arrested in August for allegedly stomping to death and eating a cat.
But that hasn’t stopped Republican politicians from scapegoating Springfield’s 15,000 Haitian immigrants as Trump and others seek to make immigration a central issue in the fall campaign. In addition to Tuesday’s debate, Trump held a press conference on Friday where he spoke at length, without evidence, about Haitians flocking to Springfield and “destroying the place.”
When Haitian immigrants began pouring into Springfield in 2017 to work in local produce-packing and processing plants, some assumed the new residents would help restore the city’s former vitality as a thriving manufacturing hub. Home to a major farm-equipment manufacturer in the mid-20th century, Springfield has lost a quarter of its population since the 1960s.
“They came to us for one reason only: they were looking for a way to learn how to work,” Casey Rollins, executive director of the Springfield chapter of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, said of those who came to the Ohio city from Haiti.
“So we got immigration lawyers and translators together and we came up with ways to help them work. We’re reaching out to them online, getting them to apply (for work permits). We wanted workers here (Springfield). They want to work.”
Haitians and other Central American immigrants are in high demand at Dole Fresh Vegetables in Springfield, where they are employed cleaning and packaging produce, and at auto machine shops desperate for workers amid labor shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
New Caribbean restaurants and food trucks have opened throughout South Springfield, once-abandoned neighborhoods are now bustling with residents, a popular Haitian radio station has been on the air for several years, and every May thousands of people gather in a local park to celebrate Haitian Flag Day.
But the influx of new immigrants has overwhelmed the region’s hospitals and schools, angering locals who resent their presence — anger that culminated last August when an 11-year-old boy was thrown to his death from a school bus in Ohio after the driver swerved to avoid a car driven by a Haitian immigrant who did not have a driver’s license.
The child’s death stoked anger and racism on Facebook and at Springfield City Commission meetings, where public commentary on immigration often lasted for more than an hour. Local residents, outraged by the growing immigrant community, suspected they were being hijacked, that Springfield was becoming the epicenter of an unfounded “Great Replacement Theory.”
Soon, right-wing extremists capitalized on the unrest in Springfield.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, armed neo-Nazi members of the Blood Tribe, a radical white supremacist group, marched down a prominent downtown street carrying flags featuring swastikas during a nearby jazz and blues festival in August.
One witness to the march, who declined to be interviewed by the Guardian out of concern for his family’s safety after his personal information was revealed to right-wing extremists online, reported seeing protesters pointing guns at cars and telling people to “go back to Africa”.
However, a representative from Springfield Police appeared to downplay the incident, telling local media that the hate group march was “just a small peaceful protest.”
A few days later, a leading member of the Blood tribe, who called himself Nathaniel Higgers but whose real name was Drake Berents, spoke at a Springfield City Commission meeting.
“I’m here to deliver a word of warning: Stop what you’re doing before it’s too late,” Berentz told Springfield Mayor Rob Lew. “Every time we bring in more Haitians, the crime and the brutality is only going to increase.”
Berentz was quickly removed for his threatening words, but a bomb threat Thursday morning forced the evacuation of Springfield City Hall, schools and other government offices.
The same group also held marches in South Dakota and Tennessee this year.
The group formed a chapter in Wadsworth, Ohio, after showing up to protest a Drag Story Time event there last year where white supremacists allegedly gave Nazi salutes and yelled “Sieg Heil.” Last year, Blood Tribe members were chased out of Maine after they tried to set up a facility and Nazi training camp in rural northeastern Maine.
“The Bloods applauded Donald Trump for bringing up the lie that immigrants are killing cats during the debates,” said Maria Bruno of Ohio Opposing Extremism, a nonprofit group founded last month in response to the rise of extremism in the state. “They’re excited to have a politician who agrees with what they’re saying.”
J.D. Vance has repeatedly claimed in recent weeks on the campaign trail that “illegal immigrants” are “wreaking havoc throughout Springfield.” Ohio’s Republican Attorney General Dave Yost said he plans to direct his office to “investigate legal options to stop the federal government from pumping unlimited amounts of immigration into Ohio communities.”
But the vast majority of Haitians in Springfield are in the US legally through Temporary Protected Status (TPS), granted because of violence and unrest in their home country. Nationals of 16 countries, including Afghanistan and Myanmar, are eligible for TPS. It is not a path to US citizenship and is only valid for 18 months, at which point it must be renewed by the federal Department of Homeland Security before the status holder can remain in the US legally.
“They’re entrepreneurs, they want to innovate,” Rollins said of Springfield’s Haitians, “and when they get qualified, they just overwork themselves.”
But many Haitians are being targeted in Springfield.
In December, a Springfield man was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on hate crime charges for attacking eight Haitian people in early 2023. A local Haitian church was broken into and damaged twice last year, and longtime black Springfield residents reported being mistaken for members of the Haitian community and subjected to verbal abuse while walking the city’s streets.
The effect is clear.
“Typically, when you drive through south Springfield, where a lot of Haitians live, you see people walking on the streets, in Haitian markets and restaurants,” Salomon said.
“We’ve seen a lot less people these past few days.”
Rollins said he received threats to destroy his St. Vincent de Paul chapter for supporting Haitians.
“People are messaging me and telling me I’ve destroyed Springfield,” she said. “We’re just trying to help people.”