Photograph Source: David Wilson – CC BY 2.0
The Telegraph recently reported that ahead of President-Elect Donald Trump’s inauguration later this month, thousands of Haitian immigrants have already left or are planning to leave Springfield, Ohio. The Haitian community has been living in fear for months, and their flight could reverse some of the economic and social gains that the rust belt town has won by virtue of its immigrant community’s hard work and cultural contributions. What is happening in Springfield could be a harbinger in similar places once Trump occupies the Oval Office.
Springfield became a focus of attention last fall when candidate Trump, during a debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, made the false claim that Haitian immigrants were eating Springfield residents’ cats and dogs. Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate, later said that the stories were based on “first-hand accounts of my constituents.” He provided no evidence, and officials in Springfield have repeatedly stated that no pets went missing or ended up on rotisseries.
Unable to maintain his or his boss’s ridiculous claims any longer, Vance later changed tack and said that inventing stories about immigrants was perfectly fine as long as they brought attention to how American towns suffer at the hands of pernicious migrants.
Their xenophobic remarks had predictable results. Members of Springfield’s Haitian community were immediately subjected to threats of violence and acts of vandalism. At a city council meeting, a local resident and vocal white supremacist, Drake Berentz, said, “I’ve come to bring a word of warning. Stop what you are doing before it’s too late. Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in.” Police removed him from the meeting. There is no program to import migrants.
Also, in the wake of Trump and Vance’s accusations, more than thirty bomb threats were made to city agencies, forcing repeated school closures and event cancellations. Haitian parents and guardians reported that even on all-clear days, they were hesitant to send their children to school, and some people complained to police about numerous acts of vandalism and property damage.
Members of the Haitian diaspora in Springfield are in the United States legally, and many are beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) provisions, which Trump has vowed to abolish. TPS means that foreign nationals may remain and work in the United States if civil conflict or natural disasters in their home countries are so dire that their lives could be at risk if they return. Haiti is currently in a state of social chaos, and violence there has dramatically spiked. Trump insists that they should be sent back.
The case of Springfield also demonstrates the falsity of the Republican Party’s claims about the causal connection between migrants and crime. Vance maintained that Haitians drove the murder rate up in Springfield by 80 percent based on the difference between the number of homicide cases in 2021 and 2023, when there were five and nine murders, respectively. However, the City of Springfield’s website states that Haitians are more likely to be the targets of crime, not the perpetrators of it. That fact generalizes in other parts of the country. However, Vance asserted that four more murders demonstrated a general trend. It does not.
According to Republican Clark County Prosecutor Daniel Driscoll, during his entire 20-year career in law enforcement, there has not been a single case of a Haitian who committed a murder in Springfield. Furthermore, the argument that Trump’s harsh immigration policies reduced crime and increased safety across the country do not bear scrutiny. FBI statistics show that more homicides occurred in Springfield under Trump than during the Obama or Biden administrations. In other words, immigration policy from the top has nothing to do with slight, statistically insignificant fluctuations in crime on the ground. One might as well blame it on the weather. Study after study has shown that higher-than-average concentrations of immigrants do not contribute to increased crime and might even lower it.
Haitians began moving to Springfield in 2017 because of plentiful employment opportunities and its low cost of living. Local labor shortages meant that their work was sorely needed, and their tax dollars have helped fill city coffers for a range of necessary services. Employers were pleased as Haitian men and women filled job vacancies. What is more, according to data cited in the Springfield News-Sun, $1 billion was generated in tax revenue in 2023, up from $864 million in 2022. These numbers represent a dramatic increase in funds available for city services. So, the addition of an estimated 15,000 people in less than a decade — who just happen to be from Haiti — became part of the fabric of the city and improved its economic fortunes. They worked hard, rented apartments, purchased homes, and started their own businesses, all of which enriched the life of a place that needed their skills.
Cities with sizable immigrant populations in red states could experience a similar outmigration to places that seem safer. In addition to Ohio, states like Pennsylvania, Florida, and Texas are currently home to thousands of migrants who are paying close attention to threats emanating from the din of Trump’s rallies or wafting from his kitsch principality at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump and his circle would like to reverse the positive developments that immigration brings. Since the Grand Old Party offers extraordinarily little to ordinary people, the theater of keeping them safe from non-existent threats must continue for the sake of political expediency. They are perfectly willing to vilify people who never hurt anyone and evoke fear in millions of others. The results may well be a greater erosion of community bonds in places like Springfield and renewed economic downturns in other rust belt regions across the country that have significant immigrant populations.
Yet, there might be a method to this madness. Engineering greater fear, increasing social atomization, and creating more economic precarity translates to easier manipulation of voters.
More importantly, however, mass deportation to countries in the throes of violence could claim innocent lives.
It is up to us to resist that.
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