For the last week, former President Donald Trump has been leveling false attacks against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio —and now, it appears a western Pennsylvania town could face the same crisis.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Monday that the city manager of the small town of Charleroi, about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh, has been complaining about the same types of xenophobic allegations.
In Charleroi, there are “people on Facebook saying that there’s a government-funded tent city in the Rite Aid parking lot, that there’s people walking down the street carrying live chickens," city manager Joe Manning told the Inquirer.
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Trump put a spotlight on Washington County, Pennsylvania during a recent rally in Arizona on Thursday in which he said Charleroi and the surrounding area had seen a boom in the Haitian immigrant population that was costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in local taxes, and he suggested the town had been left “virtually bankrupt.”
Manning said none of it was true and that the crime rate had dropped recently, according to the Inquirer.
“[Charleroi] experienced a 2,000% increase in the population of Haitian migrants under Kamala Harris. So Pennsylvania, remember this when you have to go to vote ... just remember this 2,000% increase,” Trump said in Tucson Thursday.
“It’s a small town. All of a sudden they got thousands of people. The schools are scrambling to hire translators for the influx of students who don’t speak not a word of English, costing local taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Manning said he received a call from a woman in a neighboring city on Friday, the report stated. The woman claimed she brought her daughter to the Catholic church for religious classes. After hearing the news, the woman was worried about her daughter's safety.
"Disparaging statements about Haitian immigrants have been circulated online by conservative media outlets, the Washington County Republican Party, and conservative politicians, including Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick and Charleroi Council member Larry Celaschi," the report said.
The Washington County Republican Party posted about Haitian immigrants on Facebook and was inundated with fearful messages from supporters.
One woman claimed that she got a flat tire driving through Charleroi and her car was "surrounded" by about "15 Haitians." She said she was "scared."
" I was trying to be brave because I didn’t want to act weak honestly I’m not sure what their intentions were," she wrote.
The group got her car unstuck and changed her tire.
Others flooded comments with allegations like, “Import the 3rd World become the 3rd World," or accusations that electing Democrats would lead to more "3rd World cities," the Inquirer reported.
