WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance on Sunday did not back down from false claims he and Donald Trump have made that Haitians in an Ohio community are kidnapping and eating pets, even as the Republican governor and other officials insist there is no evidence of such behavior.
Vance, the Ohio senator, said voters in Springfield have raised concerns with him and that at least 10 of them were “verifiable.” In a series of interviews on a news program, he said he was amplifying the claims to draw attention to Democrat Kamala Harris’s immigration policies, which he said are lax, adding, “Anyone who has dealt with a large influx of immigrants knows that sometimes there are cultural practices that seem very distant to many Americans.”
Local and state officials have said the claims are false, unfairly cast the city in a negative light and have generated unwanted and fear-inducing negative attention since Trump mentioned it in the presidential debate last week, when he named Springfield by name. For two days, bomb threats prompted the evacuation of schools and government buildings, with some email threats citing an influx of migrants into the community.
But it wasn’t just Springfield officials who refuted the claims. Gov. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, said Sunday that “there’s a lot of nonsense on the Internet and, you know, this is a piece of nonsense that’s just not true. There’s no evidence for it at all.”
He continued, “Let me tell you what we do know. What we do know is that the Haitians that are in Springfield are legal. They came to Springfield to work. Ohio is on the move and Springfield has really seen a big boom with a lot of businesses coming here. These Haitians came here to work for these businesses. What the businesses are telling us is that they are very good employees. They are very happy to be here. And frankly, that has helped the economy.”
Yet this narrative has dominated Trump’s campaign message over the past week, highlighting how some within the Republican Party are willing to embrace and amplify false claims as part of the inflammatory, anti-immigrant rhetoric Trump has promoted throughout his campaign.
“No matter what some local mayors have said about this issue, I hear from dozens of constituents who are concerned about these issues,” Vance said.
He added: “I think it’s important to say that we’re not angry at Haitian migrants who want a better life. We’re angry at Kamala Harris for allowing this to happen in a small town in Ohio, and thank God Donald Trump paid attention to this and would oppose this policy as the American people.”
In recent years, about 15,000 immigrants have arrived in this predominantly white, working-class city of 60,000, just over an hour’s drive west of Columbus.
Springfield also says the Haitian immigrants are in the United States legally under a federal program that allows them to remain in the country temporarily. Last month, the Biden administration granted temporary legal status to about 300,000 Haitians already in the U.S., citing conditions in Haiti that are considered unsafe to return. Haiti’s government has extended a nationwide state of emergency due to endemic gang violence.
Vance was asked in an interview whether he knew the claims were false.
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance said, quickly clarifying that he “created the focus that allowed the media to talk about this story and the suffering caused by policy.”
Vance appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” CNN’s “State of the Union” and NBC’s “Meet the Press,” while DeWine appeared on ABC’s “This Week.”
