Donald Trump is not even the US president yet, but he is having a real impact.
In Springfield, Ohio, made famous by Trump as the place where he claimed Haitian migrants are “eating cats and dogs”, there is a real fear of the incoming POTUS and his deportation plans.
I went to the city to make a new documentary for GBN America to find out whether rumours that Haitians are fleeing the town out of terror of being deported were true.
The overwhelming majority of Haitians I attempted to talk to could not speak English. Of the handful who could, two agreed to speak with us on camera.
A Haitian community organiser said his countrymen were "scared" of Donald Trump
GBN America
Lindsay Aime, a community organiser who helps Haitians integrate into Springfield by helping them learn to drive or speak the local language, said his fellow countrymen are “scared” of Donald Trump.
He confirmed that there has been an exodus of Haitians from Springfield, saying that his links across the community had confirmed to him that people were leaving out of fear of deportation. Local church leaders had seen a drop in attendance, he said, and there had been calls from worried migrants asking about their legal status in America.
More than 15,000 Haitians have flocked to Springfield, a town of just 58,000, in the last few years.
Haiti is a chaotic country brimming with poverty and wracked with political instability. Tens of thousands fled the tropical island since Joe Biden’s election and made it into the United States illegally. However, the Biden administration granted more than 300,000 Haitian immigrants Temporary Protected Status, a disputed legal concept that grants them legal rights in the United States until February 2026.
An overturned school bus in Springfield, Ohio. A Haitian migrant caused the crash, which killed a school child.
The influx of Haitians into a small Ohio town became an international story during the presidential election campaign when reports emerged that locals were stealing pets and even eating them. JD Vance, who grew up in another Ohio town less than an hour from Springfield, amplified these reports. Donald Trump then made world news by declaring in his debate with Kamala Harris that “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats”.
This claim is disputed, and though plenty of Springfield residents are certain that they are true, little hard evidence has emerged for their veracity.
While it may or may not be true that Haitians are eating American pets, Donald Trump did refocus minds on a very serious issue: Mass illegal immigration into the United States.
Much like in Britain, the impact of mass migration has had devastating consequences for many Americans.
One Springfield local, Mark Sanders, described a morning in August when he received a text message from his eleven-year-old daughter. There was a picture attached of a great yellow school bus overturned, with a flood of children being evacuated. She told her father that she was okay and that she loved him. It turned out, Sanders told me, that an illegal Haitian migrant driving a car illegally had caused the accident in which a school child was killed. When his daughter told a counsellor she would feel safer if her dad was driving her school bus, he came out of retirement to do just that.
Other Springfielders had similar complaints. A proud woman called Diana Daniels volunteers helping the homeless, whom she says are given far less resources then the newly arrived Haitians. “On Thanksgiving two [homeless people] froze to death, we’ve had three die from Fentanyl overdoses in the last three days”, she said. Meanwhile Haitians are given all sorts of financial assistance from both the government and NGOs.
Another lady told me she contracted tuberculosis, despite being in the lowest risk category, after being in contact with newly-arrived Haitians daily for a period of several months while working as a post woman.
Some residents were more positive about the recent wave of immigration, saying that Haitians were integrating into the community, however slowly, and had brought more economic activity to the town.
In November, though, this view was rejected by a majority of Americans.
Under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris record numbers of illegal aliens made their way into the United States. Clark County, where Springfield is located, voted for Donald Trump by a margin of 64%, up from 57% in 2016, and the best performance for a Republican in more than 40 years in the area. Immigration drove voters towards Donald Trump, who throughout the campaign promised to enact a vast programme of mass deportations.
President-elect Trump, and his new Border Czar, Tom Homan, have pledged to deport millions of illegals. And with so much focus on Springfield in the campaign, some Haitians believe the city could become ground zero for Mr Homan’s deportation plans.
Mr Aime, the Haitian community leader, said people were fleeing to avoid becoming the “first victims” of Mr Homan. Most, however, are not leaving the country, as many Americans would hope for, but instead simply going to other nearby towns or states, where they will receive less attention. Mr Aime did cite one case, though, of a Haitian who had returned to his home country to “avoid the drama”, and because he was growing tired of Haitians being blamed for crime.
All eyes in Springfield are now on Donald Trump and Tom Homan, both from Haitians scared of being forced to return to their homeland, and from local Republicans, desperate for them to leave.
When I asked one local activist if she supported Trump’s deportation plans, she simply replied: “Absolutely, sign me up, I will drive them to the airport.”
