LOGANSPORT, Ind. — In just a few years, thousands of immigrants from Haiti and dozens of other countries have arrived in this isolated Indiana city of 18,000 people.
Furious residents say they no longer feel safe in the once vibrant downtown, and that their children are being forced out of school by new students who don’t speak English and need lots of help. There is.
They blame Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden.
“Please do something. Our community can’t stand having this many people here,” said local photographer Candace Espinoza, 32, a Democratic presidential candidate. asked the Post about his message.
Nancy Baker, 44, a mother of two, was more candid about what she would say to Harris. “Please leave my property.”
“I don’t understand how she can support Biden all the time and keep deflecting every time they ask a question.”
It’s not entirely clear how many immigrants are arriving in Logansport, but Cass County Health Department Director Serenity Alter told the Post that the surrounding area’s population has jumped nearly 30%. Ta.
That would increase the number of immigrants arriving in the county from just 38,000 in 2020 to more than 11,000.
Another rough estimate by Logansport Mayor Chris Martin puts the number of arrivals from poor Caribbean countries at between 2,000 and 3,000 over the past four years.
What is clear is that the number of Haitian immigrant students attending Logansport schools has increased 15 times, from 14 in 2021 to 207 this year.
Baker said her 16-year-old daughter, Cheyenne, dropped out of a local high school because teachers no longer seemed to have time for English-speaking students.
“It seemed like she was getting more attention because there were so many kids and she couldn’t speak or understand what was going on,” Baker said.
“So she and other kids who grew up here, who had some issues or were struggling with certain things, were able to get the attention they needed, the help they needed from the school. I couldn’t do it,” she said.
As the former honor student’s grades began to decline, Cheyenne gave up on Logansport High School and enrolled in online homeschooling instead.
“You can’t focus all your resources on one group of children, and then everyone else falls behind,” the mother fumed.
“And you wonder why these kids are so frustrated that they’re dropping out of school and getting bad grades.”
Cheyenne expressed her dissatisfaction with the migrants, many of whom are unaccompanied minors and young adults who are believed to have been rounded up at the Tyson chicken farm in town.
“It feels like no one else is learning anything because the teacher is busy with them,” she said.
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Baker even claims that her teenage daughter was verbally abused by a Haitian immigrant while walking to a local coffee shop.
“She was walking by herself, and she was walking this way, and two of them were going this way, and as they passed, she just smiled; , and started screaming for her. She turned and looked at them, and they said, ‘Come here! Come here!’
“She was like, ‘No, no, no, I’m fine.'” She started walking quickly. they chased her. I had to run all the way to the coffee shop,” the mother said. “She’s afraid to go outside.”
Baker said she no longer felt safe in her community and blamed the federal government for its slow response to the immigration crisis, which is impacting local children.
“We can help people, that’s okay. But not at the expense of our children.”
Espinoza, a photographer who is also a mother, said she has felt uneasy about encounters with Haitian immigrants. They say they regularly stare into the windows of the house from across the street.
“It’s not safe. They just stare at you and won’t talk to you,” she said. “They’re standing there staring into my house with cell phone cameras. I don’t know if they’re recording or what they’re doing.”
The exchange left the mother-of-two afraid to leave her house and was so upset that she installed CCTV cameras on the property.
She claims the onlookers from out of town even scared some of her photo shoot customers.
“My clients wouldn’t even get out of the car for the photo shoot. They got scared so I had to take them to another location,” she said.
“It’s hard to feel comfortable when someone is watching you all the time.”
“They were there at night, and I’m not going to lie, I was scared to death. Three guys just standing there in the dark, staring out at the neighborhood, it’s scary. I don’t care what color it is. That’s not what I want.”
Espinoza, who has two children ages 10 and 13, has also seen the quality of her children’s school time decline since immigrant students arrived.
She said teachers are giving Haitian students “special treatment” by pulling them aside to help immigrant youth understand the assignments, but they do so at the expense of other students in the classroom. He said that he was being told.
“Because we have to lower our expectations of children, their reading and comprehension skills will decline,” she says.
She says she plans to vote for former President Donald Trump. Part of this is due to dissatisfaction with the Biden-Harris administration’s lackadaisical border security policies during Harris’ tenure as overwhelming border czar.
“I know our state will be better off when he becomes president,” she said. “Our country will be better then. He represents the people. What is Harris doing?”
Meanwhile, Cass County health officials are warning that a rapidly growing population of immigrants from countries that offer little or no health screenings is straining local emergency rooms.
“This surge has resulted in a significant increase in medical visits,” said Alter, the county health officer.
“Hospitals, health departments, and emergency clinics have had to enhance their translation services to ensure medical needs are understood.”
He said the living conditions of the migrants – sometimes 20 to 25 people crammed into the same living space – made infectious diseases such as tuberculosis more prevalent.
LoganSport’s coverage mirrors coverage from Springfield, Ohio. Charleroi, Pennsylvania. And so have other small cities that have experienced similarly inexplicable influxes of migrants in recent years as a result of Biden-Harris border policies.
Mayor Martin acknowledged that the city faces “some assimilation issues” due to the rapid influx of immigrants, but said it is primarily due to “cross-cultural beliefs.”
He told the Post he wants national political figures like Trump and Harris to step back.
“Simply put, stop playing politics with small communities. We don’t like this. We don’t appreciate this. Rather than talk about this, you should do your job.” I want them to do something about it.”
Additional reporting by Jennie Taer
