Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump threatened to revoke the legal status of Haitian migrants in the U.S. and deport them, once again falsely suggesting that they are endangering the majority-white city of Springfield, Ohio.
“Absolutely I’d revoke it, and I’d bring them back to their country,” Trump told NewsNation on Wednesday when asked about Springfield’s Haitian residents. For weeks, he and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have leveled racist attacks against that community.
“We cannot destroy our country. You had a beautiful, safe community, everyone’s in love with everybody, everyone’s nice, it was like a picture community, and all of a sudden in a short period of time they have 32,000 more people in there,” Trump said. “It doesn’t work, it can’t work. It has nothing to do with Haiti or anything else.”
The Trump campaign has claimed that Haitian migrants in Springfield are eating people’s pets and spreading communicable diseases, despite city officials repeatedly refuting those claims. The false accusations have put Springfield under national scrutiny. Most of the Haitians in Springfield are legally in the U.S. under the federal government’s temporary protected status program, known as TPS, but the Republican presidential ticket has nevertheless falsely claimed that they are “illegal aliens.”
First established by Congress in 1990, TPS is a form of humanitarian relief that allows foreign citizens who face undue hardship in their home countries to remain in the U.S. During his first term in the White House, Trump tried to end the program for Haiti and other countries as part of his anti-immigration crackdown. His efforts were largely stalled in federal courts, and his successor, President Joe Biden, later expanded the status to some 300,000 Haitians. Springfield has been inundated with violent threats since earlier this summer as a result of Republicans’ racist lies. Haitian residents have reported being harassed and feeling scared to leave their homes, and public officials have dealt with bomb threats and hateful emails and phone calls. Springfield’s part-time Republican mayor, Robert Rue, whose family has been the target of personal threats, has also pleaded for his city to be kept out of the debate on immigration.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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