RANCHO PALOS VERDES, California, Sept 14 (Askume) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump promised on Friday in Springfield, Ohio, to end the mass deportation of Haitian immigrants, despite the vast majority already being in the United States legally.
The city has been at the center of a social media controversy for several days after right-wing protesters falsely claimed that Haitians were eating household pets.
“We’re going to be deporting a lot of people to Springfield, Ohio,” Trump said at a news conference at a golf resort near Los Angeles.
Most of Springfield’s 15,000 Haitians live legally. Trump has long promised mass deportations, usually of people living in the country illegally.
During Tuesday’s presidential debate with Democrat Kamala Harris, Trump did not repeat his widely ridiculed comment that immigrants were eating dogs and cats.
Two elementary schools were evacuated and a middle school was closed on Friday after the Springfield community received bomb threats for the second day in a row, ABC News reports.
At the White House, President Joe Biden urged an end to attacks on Haitian communities.
“This is just wrong. The United States cannot allow this. He has to stop – what he’s doing. He has to stop,” Biden said.
In June, the Biden administration granted temporary protected status to hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the United States , a decades-old program that protects legal immigrants from deportation and grants them work permits. Haiti’s gang war has displaced more than 500,000 people and left nearly 5 million facing severe food insecurity.
Trump cited the tensions in Springfield as another example of the need for stricter immigration policies. The influx of Haitians has boosted the economy but also put a strain on social services.
“I’m angry about illegal Haitian immigrants taking over Springfield, Ohio. You see this chaos, all right,” Trump said at a rally in Las Vegas on Friday.
Later in his speech, he said, “I am outraged by the rape and murder of young American girls who came to our country so easily and so illegally.”
Haitian community leaders across the United States say the Republican candidate’s comments could put lives at risk and further inflame tensions in Springfield.
“We need help, not hate,” Springfield Mayor Rob Rue told ABC News.
City officials said they had received no credible reports of people eating livestock. City spokeswoman Karen Graves said she was not aware of any recent hate crimes against Haitians, but that some were victims of “crimes of opportunity” such as property theft.
