How Springfield, Ohio Became the Center of a Political Firestorm

A small Ohio city has been dominating headlines this past week, over claims that Haitian migrants have been killing pets and park birds for food.

City officials have debunked these rumors, but the claims gained even more prominence when Donald Trump repeated them during the televised presidential debate on Tuesday night.

The internet is flooded with clips of folks in Springfield insisting they have heard of cats and ducks going missing, Haitians laughing while denying the accusations, endless debates about immigration, and some straight-up racism, as well as scores of AI-generated images of Trump cuddling kittens and ducks.

Far from just an online storm, it is affecting real life too. Springfield’s city hall had to be evacuated on Thursday morning after a bomb threat, which officials said included “hateful language toward immigrants and Haitians in our community,” was sent to it, along with the Clark County courthouse and two elementary schools.

Behind it all is a city where people are “hurting,” Mayor Rob Rue told The New York Times, where education, health care and housing systems are struggling and where locals and migrants are grappling with a “culture clash.”

Immigration has repeatedly come up as one of the most important issues for voters this year. Some 36 percent said it was the issue that would most likely determine their ballot in the November election, according to exclusive polling carried out by Redfield & Wilton Strategies on behalf of Newsweek.

Surpassed only by the economy (62 percent), immigration comes up above health care (29 percent), housing (14 percent) and taxation (16 percent). This survey was carried out on August 29, with a sample size of 2,500 people, with a 1.96 percentage point margin of error.

Professor Sophia Jordán Wallace, a political scientist from the University of Washington who specializes in immigration, told Newsweek: “Public opinion on immigration has shifted some compared to 2020. There is more support for restrictive immigration policies than there have been previously and this is largely in response to a large number of immigrants who are seeking asylum.”

Here is everything you need to know about how Springfield ended up in this situation, how the pet-eating rumors began, and the real issues locals and Haitians are facing.

Why Are Haitian Migrants in Springfield?

After half a century of economic decline, Springfield worked hard to lure back the manufacturing industry. The plan worked and began creating jobs that ended up attracting immigrants.

Jamie McGregor, the chief executive of the family-owned business McGregor Metal, said his company did not have enough workers to meet the production demands that came after an investment boost.

“The Haitians were there to fill those positions,” McGregor told the New York Times. “They come to work every day. They don’t cause drama. They’re on time.”

Between 15,000 and 20,000 Haitian migrants have moved to the city, which had a population of just under 60,000 in 2020, over the space of four years, city officials say.

They are in the country legally, the City of Springfield’s Immigration FAQ page says, many under the Immigration Parole Program, which, under certain conditions, allows noncitizens to remain in the U.S. temporarily without meeting standard visa or immigration requirements.

The program was introduced under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952, during President Harry S. Truman’s administration, but it has been modified by multiple administrations after that, including Joe Biden‘s. The Biden administration was contacted by email for comment.

Last year, Biden’s government used the scheme to launch a Humanitarian Parole Program specifically for Haitians, Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans, allowing up to 30,000 individuals from these countries to apply for parole. They have to meet certain requirements, which can include having a U.S. sponsor and passing a background check. Haiti was included in this list given its struggles with political instability, frequent natural disasters, gang violence and long-standing poverty.

Trump’s running mate JD Vance argues that Haitian migrants are still illegal because their legality has been achieved only “through the abuse of asylum laws.”

But in a NewsNation interview on Thursday, Mayor Rue said: “Under the current federal policy, they’re here legally and they’re here and there’s nothing that’s taking them out right away, so as a community, we’re trying to embrace them.”

He added: “I don’t want to, like, be too Pollyannish about this—there is a culture clash.”

Where Did the Pet-Eating Accusations Start?

Online chatter about Haitians eating people’s cats started spreading last weekend, with many, including conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, sharing a screengrab of a post which appears to have been shared in the private Facebook group Springfield Ohio Crime and Information.

A person wrote: “Warning to all about our beloved pets and those around us!! My neighbor informed me that her daughter’s friend had lost her cat. She checked pages, kennels, asked around, etc.

“One day she came home from work, as soon as she stepped out of her car, looked toward a neighbor’s house, where Haitians live, and saw her cat hanging from a branch, like you’d do a deer for butchering and they were carving it up to eat.

“I’ve been told they are doing this to dogs, they have been doing it at Snyder Park with the ducks and geese. Please keep a close eye on these animals.”

Vance, who has spoken out against immigration in Springfield before, also posted about it, saying: “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”

It then came out that a local made similar accusations during a City Commission meeting on August 27. A recording of the meeting shows a man saying: “Bro, they’re in the park grabbing up ducks by their necks and cutting their heads off and eating them.”

Springfield City told Newsweek there have been “no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

Rue and Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine have also denied the claims, with Rue telling NewsNation: “Your pets are safe in Springfield, Ohio.”

When an ABC debate moderator challenged Trump on his claim that “the people that came in” are “eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump responded: “Maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager.”

Vance has doubled down on the claims, saying his office has received “many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who’ve said their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants.” He added: “It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”

Many Springfield locals this week have spoken about their gripes with the Haitian community and some claimed they have heard of pets going missing. Newsweek is yet to see or hear from a local who has testified to their own pet falling victim to the behavior being alleged.

Newsweek has contacted Trump and Vance, via email, for further comment.

Professor Wallace classed the rumors as typical “anti-immigrant rhetoric” which she said has historically been “dehumanizing to drum up negative opinions toward immigrants and increase the likelihood the public will support draconian immigration policies.”

“This rhetoric is damaging because it portrays immigrants in a way that other people would find disgusting, dehumanizes them, and engaging in behavior that violates values Americans hold,” she told Newsweek.

What Issues Is Springfield Facing?

Many of the resulting issues from Springfield’s population surge are practical ones—namely with education, health care and housing.

“Any community in the United States that would receive 25-to-30 percent of their population in a short period of time is going to face infrastructure strain,” Mayor Rue said. He went on to call out federal leaders for “not helping (them) solve this problem.”

On July 8, Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck wrote a letter to Ohio Senators about its “housing crisis.”

At the Rocking Horse Community Health Center, chief executive officer Yamini Teegala told the New York Times a 15-minute consultation could go up to 45 minutes because of language barriers, impacting health care.

Likewise, in education, the Springfield City School District has had to hire Haitian-Creole interpreters and around 24 teachers who are able to teach English as a second language to deal with the high number of Haitian children being enrolled.

There are also issues on the roads, with the Ohio State Highway Patrol recently dispatched to local law enforcement with traffic issues that officials say have cropped up with some Haitian drivers being unfamiliar with the U.S. traffic system.

Last August, a Haitian driver Hermanio Joseph was involved in a school bus crash which killed 11-year-old Aiden Clark and injured 20 other students.

Joseph, in his late 30s, ended up being convicted of aggravated vehicular homicide and involuntary manslaughter. He did not have a valid Ohio driver’s license, local newspaper The Springfield News-Sun reported of the trial at the time.

On Tuesday, Aiden Clark’s father Nathan Clark called on Trump and Vance to stop using his son’s death for “political gain” and urged his city not to “spin toward hate.”

He told a city commission meeting: “They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members. However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio.”

Professor Wallace told Newsweek these issues are common for small communities who receive an influx of migrants.

She said: “There is a lot of research on how communities, especially small ones, sometimes respond to quickly changing demographics. Sometimes local residents respond negatively and feel that their community is changing too fast.”

What Next For Springfield?

On Monday, Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues—including filing a lawsuit—to stop the federal government from sending “an unlimited number of migrants to Ohio communities.”

Governor DeWine on Wednesday announced he would send law enforcement and millions of dollars in health care resources to Springfield and called on the federal government to do more.

Newsweek has contacted the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for a response to these calls.

Newsweek has seen several attempts to set up anti-hate community projects in local Facebook pages. But for Mayor Rue, the pet-eating claims provided an unwelcome distraction to the work he and other community leaders are doing to cope with the pressures rapid immigration has placed on Springfield.

“If you’re going to come to Springfield, we would like that you’d have open eyes to our town,” Rue said in his NewsNation interview. “Springfield is a community that works collaboratively to get to get things accomplished. We are community where leaders will come together very quickly in the middle of an afternoon and solve a problem, and we have to focus on, unfortunately, rumors and rhetoric instead of really going after and focusing on the things that concern the citizens of Springfield, such as infrastructure, our schools and our health care system.”