Threats unnerve Ohio city after Trump’s false claims

WASHINGTON — The dogs and cats of Springfield, Ohio, appear to be perfectly safe, but many of its people are finding their lives upended this week by political rumormongering that has resulted in multiple bomb threats, school closures and a decision to dispatch the FBI.

Ever since former President Donald Trump claimed on national television that immigrants were stealing and devouring the household pets of Springfield — “they’re eating the dogs,” he practically shouted, “they’re eating the cats” — the rhythms and routines in the city have not been the same.

Never mind that city authorities have refuted the story and that many residents called it ridiculous. The furor created by Trump during Tuesday night’s presidential debate has put Springfield in the crosshairs of the nation’s political wars. For the past two days, bomb threats have proliferated, closing City Hall, schools and a motor vehicles office. FBI agents have descended on the community to guard against danger not to animals but to humans.

The unexpected and unwanted attention generated by Trump’s false stories led to real-life confusion and anxiety for some residents. Schools have been evacuated, children sheltered at home and parents forced to make other plans during the workday. Gethro Jean, a Haitian pastor, said he had been fielding questions from congregants who were concerned about attending church Sunday.

“Our town was pinpointed in the debate,” said Cydney Mills, 41, who kept her three children out of school Friday after the latest round of bomb threats. “After that, people are just showing their true colors and exhibiting hate.”

Jude Earlywine, 14, was in English class at Springfield High School on Friday morning when he heard that hundreds of young children were filing into the gymnasium after bomb threats had forced the evacuation of their elementary schools.

“Everyone was talking about it, and many people got scared because they thought that thousands of students could be killed if someone really wanted to bomb us,” he said, noting that his high school alone, the only one in the city, enrolls more than 1,500 students.

Trump’s fixation on Springfield drew an angry rebuke Friday from President Joe Biden, who denounced his predecessor for trafficking in false rumors that have demonized Haitian migrants and inflamed the presidential campaign.

At a brunch on the South Lawn of the White House billed as a “celebration of Black excellence,” Biden noted that Haitian immigrants were “under attack in our country right now,” a reference everyone in the audience appeared to understand even though he did not name Trump. “It’s simply wrong,” Biden said, his voice rising in indignation. “There’s no place in America. This has to stop, what he’s doing. It has to stop.”

Trump refused to back down Friday and vowed to conduct a mass deportation from Springfield if he is elected, saying that Haitian immigrants there were “destroying their way of life.” Although he did not repeat the claim about the pets, neither did he retract it, even though his own Republican running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, who first aired the rumor, has since acknowledged that it may not be true.

“We’re going to get these people out,” Trump told reporters during a stop in California. “We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country and we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora,” referring to a city in Colorado where he has said Venezuelan gangs are “taking over buildings.”

The rumors about Springfield may be tied to right-wing agitators. The day after the debate, Christopher Pohlhaus, leader of the national neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, took credit on his Telegram channel, according to NBC News. Pohlhaus wrote that Blood Tribe had “pushed Springfield into the public consciousness.”

The majority of Haitians in Springfield and elsewhere in the United States are in the country legally, having received temporary protected status from the Biden administration under a program started by President George W. Bush for nationals of countries in turmoil.

Springfield, situated between Dayton and Columbus, Ohio, has attracted Haitian immigrants in recent years after city leadership successfully marketed the city as an attractive place to do business. It is accessible to two interstates and home to several colleges.

It was also affordable. Auto-parts makers, food and clothing distributors and others set up shop there, especially from about 2017. But there were not enough workers.

Word traveled rapidly among Haitians in Florida, Haiti and even in other countries, that Springfield boasted well-paying jobs and a low cost of living. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, between 12,000 and 20,000 Haitians have arrived there, according to estimates by city officials.

Haitians were particularly attractive to employers because many of them had or were eligible for work authorization through their temporary protected status or another Biden administration program.

Jean Prospere, a Haitian who lives in Springfield with his teenage son, Keith, said that he had been shaken by the attacks on Haitians.

“I’m not feeling good,” he said. “I saw that information in social media networks, and it’s not real,” he said, referring to Haitians stealing neighbors’ pets for consumption.

Prospere said he fled Haiti in 2019 after gangs extorted him and threatened to kill him. He has applied for asylum and has received authorization to work. Currently, he assembles car parts at a company outside Springfield. “I hope we can find a solution between Haitian people and American people in Springfield,” he said.

The frenzy has perhaps upset parents the most. Mills was dropping off two of her children at Snowhill Elementary a few minutes behind schedule Friday morning when she noticed that students were being escorted to several buses lined up outside.

Mills suspected that, following Thursday’s threats that shuttered schools, “something crazy was going on,” she said. Soon her cellphone buzzed with a message from the district informing parents that the school had been evacuated and their children were being relocated to the city’s high school for pickup there. She drove off with her daughter, Trinity, 8, and son Gabriel, 10.

Mills decided not to drop off her youngest child, Jason, 4, at his preschool program. Fulton Elementary had reopened Friday after a bomb threat led to its closure and evacuation Thursday.

“Once I found out what going on at Snowhill, I emailed his teacher at Fulton and said we’d rather be safe than sorry,” said Mills. “She told me that very few kids were showing up.”

Mills, who lives in the working-class area of Springfield, referred to as the South Side, said she had many Haitian neighbors. They had helped spruce up the neighborhood, she said, because they were renting homes that had been boarded up or dilapidated.

“There are tons of houses that had boards over windows or big old red X signs,” she said. “There are Haitians moving in and they are fixing them.”

Local police officers and federal agents with bomb-sniffing dogs eventually combed Snowhill Elementary on Friday and declared the building safe. But the day was already lost, leaving many families unnerved.

Michelle Johnson, 51, a lifelong Springfield resident, sat on her front porch with three grandchildren, ages 7, 10 and 13. She has custody and had to go pick them up at school.

She thought the threats were just someone trying to get attention and she worried that the same thing was going to happen Monday. “When will it stop?” she asked.

Jude, the teenager at Springfield High School, said parents had pulled fellow students out of class after receiving a notice from the superintendent about threats to schools. A sophomore, Jude told his mother he wanted to stay in school to take an Advanced Placement history exam later in the day.

By lunch time, hundreds of students had left the high school, he said, and the marching band’s hall rally, planned before the Friday night football game, had been canceled. Misinformation about Haitians on social media and bomb threats have become the main topic of conversation among his friends this week, he said.

“Everybody is completely on edge,” Jude said. “It’s really stressful.” He added, “I feel that something big is about to happen, but I don’t know what it is.”

“What I am really hoping is that something big just happens,” he said, meaning a big news event elsewhere, “and it all dissolves from there.” Then, he said, “we are not in the national spotlight anymore and nobody is accusing members of our immigrant community of eating our pets and spreading other lies.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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