President Joe Biden has denounced election-season attacks on the Haitian American community in the United States, calling out Republican leaders for fear-mongering.
Speaking on Friday at a White House brunch billed as a “celebration of Black excellence”, Biden warned that Haitian Americans were a “community that’s under attack in our country right now”.
His remarks were a rebuke to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his vice presidential pick JD Vance, both of whom have spread unfounded rumours about Haitian migrants and asylum seekers in the US.
“It’s simply wrong. There’s no place in America” for that kind of rhetoric, Biden said, without naming Trump directly.
“This has to stop, what he’s doing. This has to stop.”
Trump — a former Republican president — and Vance, a senator from Ohio, have campaigned on a largely anti-immigrant platform, stirring fears of mass migration and crime at rallies across the US.
In recent weeks, both men have zeroed in on the blossoming Haitian American community in Springfield, Ohio, where racial and ethnic tensions have simmered.
Springfield, part of the country’s industrial Rust Belt, has sought to bolster its local economy in recent years by welcoming newcomers to the city.
But as the Haitian American community grew, so too did the backlash. An estimated 15,000 Haitian immigrants have moved to the area — though officials on the city commission last year cited a lower estimate, between 4,000 and 7,000.
Some longtime residents called on the city commission to “stop them from coming”.
Tensions further escalated in August 2023, when a Haitian national was involved in a car crash that overturned a school bus and killed an 11-year-old child on the first day of school.
While the boy’s family has called on residents to stop the “hate”, attacks on the Haitian American community have continued to spread, attracting national attention.
In recent weeks, unfounded rumours have ricocheted across the internet that Haitian Americans are eating pets, echoing an anti-immigrant trope with a long history in the US.
The rumour appears to have originated from a screenshot, supposedly taken from a private Facebook group. And city officials have publicly denied there was any basis for it.
Even Vance acknowledged the murky nature of the allegations. “It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false,” he wrote in a social media post on September 10.
But Trump and Vance have since repeated the rumour multiple times, including at high-profile events like the September 10 presidential debate.
“They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in,” he said at the televised debate, viewed by 67 million people. “They’re eating the cats.”
The increased scrutiny on Springfield has led to multiple threats, reportedly linked to anti-immigrant sentiment. On Thursday, city hall was evacuated after a bomb threat. On Friday, other city buildings were likewise emptied after emails warned of an explosive device — including several schools.
Nevertheless, that same day, Trump revisited his attacks on the Haitian American community in a news conference at his golf club outside of Los Angeles, California.
“In Springfield, Ohio, 20,000 illegal Haitian migrants have descended upon a town of 58,000 people, destroying their way of life,” he said. “Even the town doesn’t like to talk about it because it sounds so bad for the town.”
He said the city — as well as Aurora, Colorado — would be a centrepiece for his immigration crackdown, should he be re-elected in November’s election.
“We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country,” he said. “And we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora.”