For days, Donald Trump and his allies have zeroed in on Springfield, Ohio, amplifying baseless claims that Haitian immigrants there are eating others\u2019 pets. The promotion of such rumors, which thrust the city into the national spotlight, is rooted in a centuries-old racist trope of vilifying newcomers to the United States and highlights the country\u2019s present-day divides, historians say.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to get these people out,\u201d Trump said Friday during a news conference at his golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., promising to conduct \u201clarge deportations\u201d if he is elected president.<\/p>\n
His remarks were the latest in a swirl of canards that Trump has spread about Haitian immigrants, despite local officials debunking the claims. Leaders in Springfield have said the claims are harming the community, which has been forced to evacuate schools, city hall and other buildings after receiving threats since Trump\u2019s remarks.<\/p>\n
Trump first mentioned Springfield while debating Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday night, saying: \u201cIn Springfield, they\u2019re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they\u2019re eating the cats.\u201d His deportation pledge followed a Thursday rally where Trump accused Haitian immigrants of having \u201ctaken over\u201d Springfield and \u201cwalking off\u201d with people\u2019s pets. Hours earlier, the Republican presidential nominee posted a meme on his Truth Social platform showing kittens holding a sign that read: \u201cDon\u2019t let them eat us, vote for Trump!\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has also incorrectly said that Haitians in Springfield are in the U.S. illegally, though local officials have rebutted that as well. The migrants were granted temporary protected status in the United States after fleeing violence at home.<\/p>\n
The claims are the latest instances of Trump using dehumanizing language when talking about people who immigrate to the United States. They also mirror stereotypes some Americans have used against foreigners in the United States for nearly a century and a half.<\/p>\n
Since the first wave of Chinese immigrants arrived in the 1800s, they \u2014 along with others from European, Asian or Latin American nations \u2014 have been the subject of political cartoons, newspaper articles, caricatures and books that were used by some in politics and media to spread anti-immigrant rhetoric and instill fear in other residents, experts said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy first thought was: Here we go again,\u201d said Anita Mannur, director of American University\u2019s Asia, Pacific and Diaspora Studies program. \u201cThis is a trope we\u2019ve seen time and time again that is used to \u2018other\u2019 people of color [and] new immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n
Immigration and border security has been a flash point leading up to the November election. Republicans have singled out Springfield, which has seen an influx of Haitian immigrants in recent years after a boom in manufacturing jobs attracted new residents. The Haitian immigrants, Springfield\u2019s city manager said in a video posted to Facebook this week, have bolstered the city\u2019s workforce and helped stabilize its economy.<\/p>\n
Yet the sudden arrival of people has stretched schools, health clinics and other public services. Tensions soared in Springfield last summer when a Haitian immigrant drove into oncoming traffic and hit a school bus, killing Aiden Clark, an 11-year-old boy. His parents this week pleaded that their son\u2019s death not be used for \u201cpolitical gain\u201d after Trump\u2019s vice-presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, tweeted that the boy \u201cwas murdered by a Haitian migrant.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTo clear the air, my son, Aiden Clark, was not murdered,\u201d Nathan Clark said Tuesday during a public meeting in Springfield. \u201cHe was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump repeating the rumor about Springfield residents\u2019 pets \u2014 which Republican Party leaders picked up from a Facebook post and Vance elevated Monday \u2014 fits into the former president\u2019s record of portraying immigrants broadly as threats. His attempts to vilify immigrants and people of color, including his campaign\u2019s use of racist tropes, align with tactics that populist and authoritarian leaders have used throughout history, scholars and historians say.<\/p>\n
Such leaders win support by creating fear about certain groups, then portraying themselves as the only person who can address the problems they cause, said Florida International University law professor Ediberto Rom\u00e1n, who studies xenophobia and immigration.<\/p>\n
In response to questions from The Washington Post, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said people in Springfield were experiencing \u201cvery real suffering and tragedies\u201d that have been \u201clargely ignored by the liberal mainstream media until now.\u201d A spokesman for Vance did not respond to requests for comment; earlier, a spokesperson told The Post that Vance\u2019s office had received calls from Springfield residents with \u201cconcerns over crime and traffic accidents.\u201d Spokespeople for Trump and Vance also expressed sympathy for the Clarks and pointed to the deaths of two other children and a young woman, seeking to tie the incidents to the Biden-Harris administration\u2019s border policies.<\/p>\n
Stereotypes about immigrants eating dogs, bats or rats have long circulated in the United States \u2014 beginning during the wave of Chinese migration in the 1800s. More recently, during the 2012 presidential election, conservatives briefly seized on a passage in President Barack Obama\u2019s memoir about being given dog meat as a child while living in Indonesia. During the covid pandemic that originated in China, old racist tropes denigrating Asian Americans spread online. Trump called the covid-19 virus the \u201cChinese virus\u201d and the \u201ckung flu.\u201d<\/p>\n
The goal in spreading such stereotypes is to portray newcomers as unfit for American society or invoke disgust toward them, Mannur and other experts said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the ways to vilify Asian Americans was to cast them as \u2018other\u2019 through these imagined eating habits: that they were supposedly eaters of cats or dogs or rats,\u201d Mannur said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that\u2019s what Trump is doing,\u201d she added, \u201cpainting this image that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are coming after your pets. It doesn\u2019t really matter whether they eat them or not. There\u2019s still now this perceived threat.\u201d<\/p>\n
People around the world have long consumed wide-ranging cuisines, sometimes depending on the varying sources of available protein. But those differences can be weaponized to sow division and propel the notion that some immigrants are incapable of assimilating \u201cbecause they\u2019re so different \u2026 they can never be like us,\u201d said Julia Young, a history professor at the Catholic University of America.<\/p>\n
That can fuel nativism, or the idea that immigrants present an existential threat, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most successful claims for politicians trying to demonize immigrants have to have a tiny kernel of truth in them, or something that might make them easier to believe,\u201d Young said. \u201cSo, for instance, in the case of Haitians: Most people in the U.S. know nothing about Haiti, but they might know that it\u2019s a place where voodoo is practiced. And if that\u2019s your only association to Haitians, then it doesn\u2019t become that far-fetched to believe that they might take or eat your pet for an animal sacrifice \u2014 which is reprehensible and baseless, but still easier to believe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haitians have a long history of immigrating to the United States and as of 2022, most of the 700,000-plus Haitian immigrants in the United States had already become U.S. citizens, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank. But the number of newer arrivals seeking to enter the country has jumped in recent years. Many are fleeing gang and political violence in Haiti. Some had earlier moved to South America and are coming directly from there.<\/p>\n
The number of Haitians crossing the southern border illegally has dropped from approximately 45,000 in fiscal year 2021 to more than 1,000 last year, according to Border Patrol data. Officials attribute the decline to a new Biden administration parole program that has allowed Haitians and others to enter legally at airports if they have a U.S. sponsor and prior approval. Approximately 200,000 Haitians have arrived legally under that program since 2023, federal records show.<\/p>\n
For Haitians in the U.S. and abroad, the episode has prompted anger and sadness. Farah Juste, an activist and singer who lives in Florida, said she\u2019s not bothered by the comments, but can tell that others in the Haitian diaspora \u2014 from places such as New York, Montreal and Boston \u2014 are furious over it. \u201cI\u2019ve heard them on TV, I\u2019ve heard them on the radio\u201d reacting to Trump and Vance\u2019s comments, she said.<\/p>\n
Still, anti-immigration sentiments, or nativism, has been part of American politics since the country\u2019s inception, said Young, the history professor. \u201cEach new generation of immigrants \u2014 whether they\u2019re Irish, Pole, Italian, Chinese, Mexican or what have you \u2014 has been met with this dangerous rhetoric, almost fantastical claims about them and [an] \u2018us versus them\u2019 mentality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luke Ritter, a historian who has extensively researched nativism and American conspiratorial beliefs, echoed Young: \u201cNativism in the U.S. rises and falls across time like the waves of the ocean. Each time nativist rhetoric increases, it takes on a slightly different shape and color, but it draws from the same well of anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump seizes on those anxieties by blaming immigrants for problems in American society, Young said.<\/p>\n
Immigration limits are core parts of Trump\u2019s platform. His immigration policy proposals include an unprecedented mass deportation of undocumented immigrants by rounding them up and potentially putting some in detention camps, as well as the suspension of the refugee program. Immigration advocates and former government immigration officials have criticized his deportation plans as alarming and impractical.<\/p>\n
Since he entered politics, Trump has disparaged immigrants in inflammatory and sometimes racist language. He launched his 2016 presidential campaign with a speech in which he told supporters that Mexico was sending rapists, drugs and crime into the United States. He has called immigrants animals, thugs and terrorists, dismissed them as carriers of disease and portrayed Latino migrants as staging an \u201cinvasion\u201d of the United States. Last year, he said undocumented immigrants are \u201cpoisoning the blood of our country,\u201d drawing criticism from experts who compared his language to that of Adolf Hitler.<\/p>\n
Trump has also turned his rhetoric toward Haitians in the past: In 2018, he called Haiti and other nations \u201cshithole countries.\u201d In 2017, the New York Times reported he said immigrants from Haiti \u201call have AIDS.\u201d In 2021, he repeated the idea on Fox News, saying there are \u201chundreds of thousands of people flowing in from Haiti\u201d and that many of them \u201cprobably have AIDS.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tony Jean Thenor, a 66-year-old social worker from North Miami who emigrated from Haiti in 1980, said Trump\u2019s comments add another layer of trauma for Haitians who came to the United States to escape gang violence and political disarray in their home country, a situation that has been exacerbated by decades of foreign intervention.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not that we came to destroy life here,\u201d Thenor said. \u201cIt\u2019s because we are running to take a breath of fresh air.\u201d<\/p>\n
Widlore M\u00e9rancourt, Maria Sacchetti, Mariana Alfaro, Azi Paybarah and Amy B Wang contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
For days, Donald Trump and his allies have zeroed in on Springfield, Ohio, amplifying baseless claims that Haitian immigrants there are eating others\u2019 pets. The promotion of such rumors, which thrust the city into the national spotlight, is rooted in a centuries-old racist trope of vilifying newcomers to the United States and highlights the country\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9570,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}