Springfield, Ohio in chaos after Trump spreads false claim that Haitian migrants are “eating dogs and cats”

Despite no evidence, President Trump and J.D. Vance continue to defend their false narrative.

SPRINGFIELD—Multiple K-12 schools were forced to evacuate because of bomb threats. Two hospitals were forced into lockdown because of similar threats. Wittenberg University in Ohio said someone threatened to shoot Haitians on campus and all of their events have been canceled. KKK flyers saying ‘foreigners & Haitians out’ are being distributed across the town.

This is the state of Springfield, Ohio a small town of 60,000 people that has made national headlines after former President Trump falsely said that Haitian immigrants are “eating dogs” and “cats” in the town during the 2024 presidential debate. However, officials, including the city manager, Ohio’s governor, and local authorities say the claim is baseless.

“This is something that came up on the internet, and the internet can be quite crazy sometimes,” Mike DeWine, Ohio’s governor told CBS News. "Mayor [Rob] Rue of Springfield says, 'No, there's no truth in that.' They have no evidence of that at all. So, I think we go with what the mayor says. He knows his city.”

The rumor originated from a Facebook post by Springfield woman Erika Lee, who told NBC she wrote a post about a friend of a neighbor’s daughter who lost her cat – and then found the animal strung up outside the home of a Haitian family. Lee has apologized for rumors about Haitian immigrants eating pets that resulted from the post saying “It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Lee told NBC News on Friday.

CONTEXT: “About 15,000 Haitian immigrants began trickling into Springfield – a city of 60,000 – to work in local produce packaging and machining factories in 2017”, per the Guardian.