My old hometown rarely makes the national news, but Springfield, Ohio is in the spotlight thanks to Donald Trump, his running mate and former Buckeye JD Vance, and fact-challenged social media posters who have exploited an influx of Haitian immigrants and the tragic death of a child for political gain.
“They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said of Springfield’s immigrants during last week’s presidential debate, inviting a fact check from debate moderators and laughter from debate opponent Kamala Harris, who called the comments “extreme.”
Repeated falsehoods about the city may have spurred bomb threats that closed down parts of Springfield last Thursday and Friday, including City Hall, other downtown buildings, some Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles locations, and some schools, including my old elementary school and middle school.
Mayor Rob Rue pleaded with influencers to stop spreading the lies, saying, “We need them to understand what their words are doing to cities like Springfield, Ohio.”
Senatorial candidate J.D. Vance, right, and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, left, pose for a photograph with a supporter in Mason, Ohio, Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
Vance, who grew up 50 miles away from Springfield in Middletown and represents Ohio in the U.S. Senate, promoted falsehoods on Monday, Sept. 9, before the debate in a post on X criticizing Harris: “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?”
Vance acknowledged the story could be false, as city officials have repeatedly insisted, but urged supporters to promote it anyway: “Don’t let the crybabies in the media dissuade you, fellow patriots. Keep the cat memes flowing.”
The falsehoods about Haitians lingered mostly on fringes of the internet until Charlie Kirk, founder of the pro-MAGA nonprofit group Turning Point USA, put out an inflammatory post Sept. 10 that’s been viewed 1.2 million times: “Our @FrontlinesTPUSA team visited Springfield, OH today. EVERYONE they spoke to has heard stories of people’s pets being eaten as well as ducks and geese disappearing. Residents describe it as a ‘tinderbox’ and a ‘time bomb’ ready to go off.”
“Cats are a delicacy in Haiti,” said one interviewee.
Vance and Trump also have exploited a tragic 2023 accident in which a Haitian immigrant ran his minivan into a school bus just north of Springfield, causing the death of an 11-year-old boy named Aiden Clark.
“Do you know what’s confirmed?” wrote Vance on X. “That a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here.”
The immigrant, a man named Hermanio Joseph, immigrated to Ohio legally. He hit the bus while blinded by sunlight on a curving road and has been convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
“We do not want our son’s name to be associated with the hate that’s being spewed.”
Aiden’s father first spoke out last year, asking Trump and Vance to stop politicizing the tragedy. “We do not want our son’s name to be associated with the hate that’s being spewed,” Nathan Clark told the local newspaper, the Springfield News-Sun.
Clark spoke out again at a Springfield City Commission meeting held the same day as the presidential debate. Clark called Trump and Vance “morally bankrupt” for exploiting Aiden’s death. “My son was not murdered,” Clark said at the meeting.
“This tragedy is felt all over this community, the state and even the nation, but don’t spin this toward hate,” said Clark, a public school teacher. If Aiden had been killed by a white man, his family might have avoided seeing his death used by Trump, Vance, U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno and U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, the grieving father said.
“They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims that fluffy cats are being ravaged and eaten by community members. … They are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio. I will listen to them one more time to hear their apologies.”
Aerial view of the International Harvester Company in Springfield, Ohio, 1930s. (Photo from Ohio Federal Writers’ Project via Ohio History Connection)
Springfield is a proud Midwestern town located on the original National Road and was once the thriving home to Crowell-Collier Publishing, (my mom was one of its 2,000 employees before four kids came along) and a vast International Harvester plant that employed thousands more (including my dad).
Population peaked in the 1960s as employers and residents fled, providing ample material for YouTube videos of abandoned houses, restaurants, grocery stores, shopping centers and a mall.
City and business leaders began traveling to Haiti to recruit needed workers, many of them members of the troubled country’s middle and upper classes who were desperate to flee the chaos and violence that has escalated since the 2021 murder of Haiti’s president.
Springfield’s population has edged back up to 58,000 thanks to some 15,000 to 20,000 Haitian immigrants, whose influx has stretched the staff and budgets of local schools and health care facilities while causing a boom in the city’s housing market. Meanwhile, merchants prosper, new Haitian churches flourish, and some of the city’s dilapidated grand old houses are being fixed up.
In 2018, then President Trump questioned whether America should allow immigration from Haiti and other “shit-hole countries” and suggested the country would do better with more immigrants from Norway.
I left Ohio years ago but was back in Springfield in August 2023 for my high school reunion. My wife and I were driving to see friends when we happened upon the fatal bus accident, which injured dozens of children and increased local agitation against the Haitian immigrants, some of it amplified by a local neo-Nazi group called Blood Tribe.
Local Christian leaders have welcomed the immigrants and are working to help them find work, learn English and get driver’s licenses.
“You will always have racists, but our approach is, if I’m a child of God, then God’s other children are my brothers and sisters, they’re my family,” said Jay Weygandt a founder and board member of the Nehemiah Foundation, a 30-year-old nonprofit that brings together local churches, ministries and faith leaders.
The Nehemiah Foundation is named for an Old Testament hero who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. It grew out of a group of faith leaders who met regularly to pray for the city before deciding they could be the answer to their own prayers by banding together and uniting the faith community to help the city prosper. Its motto: “Pray. Unify. Equip. Mobilize!”
The foundation, which includes a Haitian coalition among its 30 ministry partners and 11 church partners, offers an after-school tutoring program, English classes, and warming and cooling centers it operates with the city. Last weekend, it hosted its annual “Case for Community Summit,” a two-day event that brings together faith leaders and the public to explore better ways of serving Springfield.
“Most people see the Haitians as really nice people who have a very low crime rate, are dedicated to work, and are very happy to work overtime, but the problem has been too many of them at one time,” said Weygandt, who remains hopeful.
“Springfield is having a hard time right now, and we need help, but this is a problem we will work through, and it will come out good,” he said.
Weygandt is less hopeful about America’s epistemologically challenged, culture-warring leaders and those who gullibly embrace anything they say.
“I know politicians say stuff to help their own cause, and whether it is true or not is irrelevant,” he said. “But I take an old-school approach that has become a kind of a minority position. I believe it’s very important whether something is true or not.”
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