Some groups have condemned Vance’s remarks as racist.
The small city of Springfield, Ohio is once again at the center of a political firestorm after J.D. Vance repeated false claims of Haitian immigrants eating other residents’ pets during an appearance on CNN on Sunday.
This wasn’t the first time this baseless conspiracy theory was given airtime on a national stage: During the first presidential debate between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the ex-commander-in-chief reiterated said of Springfield’s Haitian immigrant community, “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
At the time, ABC News co-moderator David Muir immediately fact-checked Trump’s claims, saying that the city manager told the network there had been no credible reports of pets being harmed by the immigrant community.
Despite this pushback, the shocking exchange points to a conspiracy that has been rapidly spreading across the internet, pushed in part by Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance and other Republicans, who continue to double down on these allegations. We took a closer at these theories and how they got started in the first place.
The claims
Vance claimed on social media that “people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.” He went on to tie his unverified suggestion about pets to unspecified “reports” and suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris was to blame for Haitian immigrants’ “generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio.”
“Where is our border czar?” Vance wrote, referring to Harris. The next day, Vance posted again on X about Springfield, saying his office “received many inquiries” in the past few weeks from residents in Springfield, Ohio, concerned about their pets and local wildlife, but added that “it’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”
Though the vice president isn’t in charge of the border policy, President Biden previously tasked her with tackling the “root causes” of migration. Republicans have since used this role to attack Harris over her stance on immigration, an issue they have been hitting hard on the campaign trail.
In his social media spree, Vance also asserted (without proof) that Haitians in Springfield are illegal immigrants. The Trump campaign echoed this sentiment in a Sept. 9 news release, saying residents of Springfield have “been left in terror” after migrants were “dumped” or “unvetted” in the city because of the Biden-Harris administration’s policies.
A few days later, he went on CNN to repeat his claim, saying that he’s heard “first-hand accounts” from his constituents that the rumor is true. Yet, he also said that he’s willing to “create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people.”
In recent years, as many as 20,000 Haitian immigrants have arrived in the Springfield area after fleeing violence, political instability, and poverty. Despite Republicans’ claims to the contrary, the city has said that they’re in the U.S. legally, under the federally supported Immigration Parole Program. The Haitian-American Foundation for Democracy slammed Republicans for spreading what it called “dangerous falsehoods,” saying “this reckless fear-mongering puts vulnerable communities at risk, stokes division, and incites hate crimes.”
How did this conspiracy get started anyway?
The widely debunked claims appear to be linked to a local Springfield Facebook group. On Sept. 6, a post from this forum surfaced, talking about how a person’s “neighbor’s daughter’s friend” lost her cat and saw it hanging near a Haitian neighbor’s house being carved up to be eaten.
The user went on to claim without evidence that “Rangers & police” had told them that Haitian neighbors had also been hanging ducks and geese for butchering. Though the group has since been set to private, screenshots of these posts have been circulating on X and other platforms, racking up thousands of likes and views.
The woman who created the post has since come forward, saying that she deeply regrets the controversy it’s kicked off. “It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee told NBC.
Lee also said that she’s upset that her post has been used to demonize the Haitian community in her town. “I feel for the Haitian community,” she says. “If I was in the Haitians’ position, I’d be terrified, too, worried that somebody’s going to come after me because they think I’m hurting somebody that they love and that, again, that’s not what I was trying to do.”
This claim appears to be conflated with a separate, unrelated incident that occurred last month in Canton, Ohio. On Aug. 26, Canton police arrested Allexis Ferrell for animal cruelty, among other charges, after she tortured and killed a cat before eating it. But, local authorities have confirmed that the 27-year-old woman is not from Haiti.
In response to these rumors, Springfield city manager Bryan Heck’s office issued a statement saying, “There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.” Local police have spoken out too, as has Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. The Republican governor told ABC: “This is a piece of garbage that is simply not true.”
DeWine also went on to defend the Haitian community, saying that they’re working in the area legally and have helped Springfield — a town that’s economy has slumped as its factories have closed — stage a “resurgence.”
However, these statements from officials didn’t stop Republicans, like Vance and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, from amplifying it on their own social media pages. “Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don’t eat us,” Cruz wrote on X, as a caption on a photo of cats. Before long, the Republican House Committee and Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., spread A.I.-generated images showing the former president posing with cats and a duck.
Part of a pattern
Unfortunately, these claims are nothing new: Historians have pointed out that conservative politicians and pundits have a long history of smearing Haitian immigrants in particular.
In January 2018, Trump referred to African countries and Haiti as “sh*thole” nations” during a closed-down meeting with U.S. senators. More recently, tech billionaire Elon Musk and conservative pundits accused migrants from this community of cannibalism. Experts say these sensationalized claims were based on videos from alleged gang members in Haiti, who appear to be biting human flesh to intimidate locals. “A whole population is getting blamed for what some psycho gang members are doing,” lawyer Chris Nestor said in an interview with NBC News. “It is racist. It is dehumanizing.”
Laurent Dubois, a historian who specializes in Haiti at the University of Virginia, told the outlet, “There is probably no country in the world that has had more misrepresentations projected onto it than Haiti.”
How has it impacted Springfield?
Since the debate, the city and its officials have been targeted, upending life in Springfield. Last week, bomb threats forced the closure and evacuation of the city’s public schools, NBC reports. And on Sunday, Wittenberg University cancelled all its campus activities because of a shooting threat targeting Haitian immigrants.
“Wittenberg University is currently taking extreme precautions following a Saturday email threatening a potential shooting on-campus today, Sunday, Sept. 15,” a campus alert reads.
City officials have since called for politicians to stop dragging Springfield into the national spotlight. “All these federal politicians that have negatively spun our city, they need to know they’re hurting our city, and it was their words that did it,” Mayor Rob Rue told a local news station.
