Vance amplifies false claims about Haitian migrants in Ohio

A week after his unsubstantiated comments on Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, sparked a national firestorm and spurred violent threats in the small town, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) doubled down on his baseless claims that Haitians are eating their neighbors’ pets “to draw attention to the Biden-Harris immigration policies.”

Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, rejected Vance’s claims, calling the storyline “a piece of garbage that was simply not true.”

In a contentious interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday morning, Vance said that if he has 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.”

Donald Trump’s running mate has repeatedly claimed that the media was not paying attention to problems in Springfield until he spread the false rumor and his allies started making racist memes about Haitians eating pets in the small town. But the New York Times published an in-depth piece on Springfield days before Vance raised his baseless allegations in a social media post that said people “have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”

Trump repeated the claims Tuesday during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, even as the latest allegations about Springfield have been debunked at the local and state level, spurred violent threats against local Haitians - who are in the United States legally - and led to bomb threats that temporarily closed City Hall and schools. But despite those fact checks from local officials, Vance stuck to his claims and said he was simply passing along the concerns of his constituents.

But when Bash noted that Vance “just said you’re creating this story,” the senator quickly attempted to clarify his position.

“I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it,” he said. “I didn’t create 20,000 illegal migrants coming into Springfield thanks to Kamala Harris’s policies. Her policies did that.”

Harris is not directly responsible for Haitian immigration to Springfield. They arrived after being admitted to the United States legally under a program that grants them temporary protected status due to the violence and chaos in their home country.

“But yes,” Vance continued, “we created the actual focus that allowed the American media to talk about this story and the suffering caused by Kamala Harris’s policies.”

Last week, the mayor of Springfield said that a bomb threat Thursday that led to the evacuation of City Hall and other buildings “used hateful language towards immigrants and Haitians in our community.” More bomb threats and evacuations followed on Friday.

On Saturday, when reporters asked Trump about them, he said he didn’t know what had happened with the bomb threats, but he asserted that the city was being “taken over” by migrants, even though most of the Haitians are here on legal visas. “Springfield was this beautiful town, and now they’re going through hell. It’s a sad thing. Not going to happen with me,” Trump told reporters.

If elected, Trump said Friday, he would effect “large deportations in Springfield. We’re going to get these people out,” and then indicated he would send Haitians to Venezuela. He baselessly inflated the number of migrants living there and accused them of destroying the town.

When Bash asked Vance on Sunday about the threats to Springfield, he countered that the CNN anchor “just accused me of inciting violence against the community when all that I’ve done is surface the complaints of my constituents, people who are suffering because of Kamala Harris’s policies. Are we not allowed to talk about these problems because some psychopaths are threatening violence? We can condemn the violence on the one hand, but also talk about the terrible consequences of Kamala Harris’s open border, on the other hand.”

Vance’s comments lie in sharp contrast to those made by DeWine, a fellow Republican who said Sunday that “the Haitians who are in Springfield are legal” and that “they came to Springfield to work,” praising their arrival as aiding “a great resurgence with a lot of companies coming in.”

DeWine said the companies have said “they are very good workers. They’re very happy to have them there. And frankly, that’s helped the economy.”

The governor allowed that the influx of an estimated 15,000 Haitians to a town of 58,000 created strains on municipal services that require more federal assistance. “Now, are there problems connected? Well, sure,” he said. “And we’re addressing those. We’re working on those every single day.”

But DeWine also decried the threats that have come to Springfield since Vance and Trump zeroed in on the town as a campaign talking point, including white nationalist groups hoping to capitalize on racial animus. “There are hate groups coming into Springfield,” DeWine said. “We don’t need these hate groups.”

But as much as DeWine condemned the false claims about Haitians in Springfield, he stopped short of criticizing Trump and Vance for spreading those claims, saying that the problems on the border are “legitimate” and ones where “the vast majority” of the American people “agree with Donald Trump.” But, he concluded, “what’s going on in Springfield is just fundamentally different. These people are here legally. They came to work. They are looking for good people. These are hardworking people.”

A representative for Vance had no immediate comment about DeWine’s rejection of the claims.

Late last week, the woman who penned a Facebook post claiming she had heard about Haitians eating pets said she had no direct knowledge of such an incident and regrets her role in spreading rumors about it.

“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, told NBC News on Friday. Lee’s original post claimed a neighbor’s cat had gone missing and that the neighbor believed the cat had been attacked by her Haitian neighbors.

But media and fact-checking watchdog NewsGuard interviewed both Lee and her neighbor, Kimberly Newton, and found that Lee had misstated her friend’s original story in her Facebook post, which she has since deleted.

Newton, who was not interviewed by NBC, said she heard about the purported attack from a third party, and had not witnessed it directly, NewsGuard reported.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) said Sunday that Vance “should know better” than continuing to spread baseless claims. He said there is a “causal connection” between Vance’s spreading of the rumors and “the safety and security of the American people” - referencing the bomb threats in Springfield that came after Trump repeated the false allegations on the debate stage.

“He just doesn’t understand the power of his words, the power of his lies,” Shapiro said on CNN. “Those lies are putting people at risk.”

On Friday, President Joe Biden demanded that the attacks on the Haitian community in Springfield stop. “I want to take a moment to say something [about the] Haitian American community that’s under attack in our country right now,” Biden said during a White House event celebrating Black excellence. “It’s simply wrong. There’s no place in America. This has to stop, what he’s doing. It has to stop!”

Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.