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After the City of Springfield, Ohio received over thirty bomb threats requiring the evacuation of government buildings and schools, and the cancellation of in-person classes at Wittenberg University, six Ohio lawmakers requested emergency law enforcement funding from U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. Photo below, courtesy of The Columbus Dispatch via Liz Dufour, Cincinnati Enquirer

“The national attention crested after Ohio Sen. JD Vance posted claims without evidence about Haitian immigrants abducting and eating dogs and cats on social media. Former president Donald Trump repeated the claims during the presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, despite local and state officials saying the claims are false.” Columbus Dispatch, September 26, 2024

No matter how many times the Republican mayor and law enforcement personnel of the City of Springfield, Ohio, the president of Wittenberg University, and even the Republican governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, state that there are “no credible reports” whatsoever, of any of the legal, Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, eating people’s pets, or geese roaming in its parks, over half of current supporters of former president Trump still choose to believe the Trump—Vance campaign, rather than their government officials and legitimate news sources. This is not a point for welcome and necessary protest of our government’s policies, nor is it a matter of opinion. There is simply no evidence these statements are true, and the lies are directly causing harm to all in Springfield, and for that matter, to all U.S. cities and communities.

According to a post-presidential debate survey taken by YouGov and reported in a September 17, 2024 article in The Hill:

…22 percent of Trump-backers say they think the debunked lies that have spread about migrants abducting dogs and cats to eat are “definitely true,” while 30 percent said that they are “probably true.” Another 24 percent said they aren’t sure.

A whopping 76 percent of likely voters who currently support former president Trump either believe that Springfield’s Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbor’s pets or reserve the right to scapegoat them in the future…without a shred of evidence and with Republican party officials denouncing these lies as “garbage”

"There's a lot of garbage on the internet and this is a piece of garbage that was simply not true, there's no evidence of this at all," he [Ohio’s Republican Governor, Mike DeWine] told ABC's "This Week."

Governor DeWine also wrote an Opinion piece for The New York Times detailing he and his wife’s deep connections with the City of Springfield, his trips to Haiti as a Congressman and the City’s nearly 200 years of welcoming and assimilating immigrants, exactly as our country has done. Governor DeWine did not, however, decline to support the Trump—Vance ticket as hundreds of his other Republican colleagues have done, but managed to say he was “saddened” by their choice to attack, and then double and triple down on their attacks of Springfield’s Haitian immigrant community.

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We are almost entirely a nation of immigrants,¹ yet many in our country have demonized and scapegoated each new immigrant group as they tried to assimilate into our country. Now, this fear mongering is amplified through through social media, and consequently, more, perhaps otherwise sane people believe lies. The only antidote to lies is the truth, and that is what our justice system attempts to unveil—the truth through the presentation of facts, and the analysis of those facts by a judge and the peers of the accused.

The Mayor of Springfield, Rob Rue, recently stated that the lies perpetrated by former president Trump and Senator Vance have cost the city “hundreds of thousands of dollars”, according to a CNN report published on September 22, mostly due to antagonizers calling in bomb threats and the resulting evacuations of public buildings, schools and even grocery stores. On September 24, , a nonprofit Haitian community group filed criminal charges against both Trump and Vance. Here is what their attorney said:

If anyone else had disrupted public service, made false alarms, and engaged in telecommunications harassment in the manner Trump and Vance did with their relentless and persistent lies—even after the governor and mayor said what they were saying was false, they would’ve been arrested by now," Chandra [ the Haitian group’s attorney] said in a statement Tuesday. "They must be held accountable to the rule of law in the same way any of the rest of us would be.

Let’s hope this lawsuit, if allowed to go forward, brings some measure of accountability to the fear mongers. In the meantime, it can only help to remember the prescient words of Rod Serling, a graduate of historic Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, just 10 minutes south of Springfield. Mr. Serling’s daughter Anne, wrote a book about her father titled: “As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling”, and she posted the following quote on her Facebook page yesterday:

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I’d love to hear your thoughts about the issues raised here—immigration, political campaigns, scapegoating the other, lawsuits…what else? Please leave your comments below.

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