Springfield, Ohio has been a stirring pot of political heat during the recent weeks. Following a wave of immigration coming in from Haiti, residents of Springfield have issued complaints and made public statements regarding several different issues. This problem came to a larger light by a comment made by former president Donald Trump during a presidential debate.
“In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there.” mentioned Trump.
The complaints made by some residents of Springfield include accusations of Haitian migrant neighbors eating cats, dogs and geese, using up local resources, and even reckless driving.
Among several articles, there have been mentions of an accident concerning a 36 year old Haitian migrant hitting and flipping a school bus filled with 20 elementary school students, killing an 11 year old boy. In another incident, a mother and her 7 year old autistic daughter were struck when a Haitian migrant who has been living in the US for 3 years, made a right turn in the left lane. Another incident describes an accident where a 71 year old woman died in a fatal crash by a 38 year old Haitian migrant whilst she was changing her trash cans early in the morning.
There are no official positive reports of cat, dog, or geese eating by Haitian immigrants.
Regarding the use of local resources in Springfield, an article by The New Yorker mentions an immigrant from Haiti named Viles Dorsainvil providing the statement “Now they believe that the government took the money from them to give to the Haitians. This is where the tension started to rise against the Haitians, with people saying that the government gave Haitians cash, which was a false claim. Some people do not understand that at some point in time after covid, the benefits that they used to receive for free were going to stop. But instead of looking for the truth, they just put it in their minds that those benefits that were taken from them were going to us Haitians.”
When Trump mentioned this issue during a presidential debate, the issues in Springfield started receiving national coverage. Though some attention brought to it is purely negative. Haitian people in Springfield have received threats of violence in a number of ways. There have been sightings of Neo-Nazi groups marching in downtown Springfield, bomb threats on schools allegedly made by some Trump supporters, and more.
“Yes, we have had so many Haitians who discover on the window of the car some papers from the K.K.K. or some white-supremacist group, all bad words and telling them that if they’re not leaving it’s going to get ugly. All those things. Everything feels very dangerous. And we have people whose houses got vandalized, and the windows got broken and everything.” Dorsainvil mentioned.