Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Thursday once again brought attention to the surge of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
The city has been thrust into the national spotlight and has emerged as a topic of debate in the 2024 presidential election.
Trump & Springfield
Trump on the campaign trail has used Springfield to highlight the pitfalls of mass migration.
“There’s a place called Springfield, Ohio, that you’ve been reading about,” Trump told supporters during a campaign rally in Tucson, Arizona. “Twenty-thousand illegal Haitian immigrants have descended upon the town of 58,000 people, destroying their entire way of life. This was a beautiful community and now it’s horrible what’s happened.”
The former president said the surge is putting a major strain on the community.
Trump further blamed the current administration for the influx of immigrants and said Haitians were allowed into the city due to the policies of President Joe Biden and Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Over the past 3 and a half years, the Harris-Biden administration has resettled half a million illegal migrants from the failed state of Haiti … into American communities,” Trump told supporters in Tucson.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine acknowledged “the influx of thousands of Haitian migrants over the last several years” in a recent press release when announcing additional support and more resources to deal with the surge.
About 15,000 Haitian immigrants have arrived in the town located in Clark County in recent years.
In December 2023, the Haitian Support Center, a non-profit organization, was founded in the city to provide support to the Haitian community for housing, interpreting, job search, welfare assistance, and other services.
Temporary Protected Status
Increasing gang violence, political turmoil, and a humanitarian crisis in Haiti have prompted residents to flee their home country.
The number of people forced to flee their homes in Haiti has jumped from 362,000 in early March when violence spiked in the capital city of Port-au-Prince to more than 578,000 in June, a 60 percent increase over only three months, according to the United Nations July 2024 report.
“The entire social fabric of families is unraveling in Haiti as displacement in the country reaches record numbers due largely to insecurity and gang-related violence,” according to Abdoulaye Sawadogo, head of the U.N.’s humanitarian coordination office.
Many Haitians remain in the United States under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a designation that protects them from deportation and allows them to work in the United States.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas earlier this year announced the extension of TPS for Haitian migrants for 18 months. This was applied to Haitians already in the United States and allowed them to stay in the country through Feb. 3, 2026.
Democrats’ Response to Trump
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Thursday accused Trump of “hate speech” by saying Haitian immigrants were abducting pets and eating them.
“It is undignified and an insult to all of us as Americans,” she said during a media briefing. “What is happening here is an attempt to tear apart communities … it puts their lives in danger and it is just hate speech. That’s what it is.”
Harris during the debate described Trump’s claims as “extreme.”
Springfield officials have dismissed the pet-eating claims and said there have been no credible reports of pets being harmed by the immigrant community.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, however, said the contrary.
“There’s a recorded police call from a witness who saw immigrants capturing geese for food in Springfield,” Yost wrote in a post on X. “Citizens testified to City Council. These people would be competent witnesses in court. Why does the media find a carefully worded City Hall press release better evidence?”
Yost has also directed his office to research legal avenues to stop the federal government from sending an unlimited number of immigrants to Ohio communities. He said the problem is not migrants, rather way too many migrants in such a short period of time.
Meanwhile, John Kirby, National Security Council spokesman, also accused Republicans of spewing hatred.
“What’s deeply concerning to us is you’ve got now elected officials in the Republican Party pushing yet another conspiracy theory that’s just seeking to divide people based on lies and, let’s be honest, based on an element of racism,” Kirby said Tuesday.
Trump on Thursday described Haiti as a “totally failed country.” By contrast, Biden has called Haiti an “extraordinary country” and that its people deserve security, opportunity, and freedom.
“We are enriched by Haitian immigrants and Haitian Americans’ contributions,” Biden said in a June 2024 statement.