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'Hitlerian': Trump Vows to Deport Haitians Legally in Ohio to Venezuela
"The lies and conspiracies about Haitians are part of a larger volume of anti-immigrant and dehumanizing rhetoric that actively courts political violence," one immigrant rights advocate said.
Sep 14, 2024
U.S. President Donald Trump escalated his attack on the Haitian immigrant community of Springfield, Ohio on Friday when he promised to begin his mass deportation plan there if elected president.
"We will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio, large deportations," Trump told reporters at his golf course near Los Angeles, California. "We're going to get these people out. We're bringing them back to Venezuela."
Trump's remarks come despite the fact that most of the immigrants in Springfield are from Haiti and are in the country legally. Trump had previously pledged to deport the 15 to 20 million people who he says are or will be in this country illegally by the time he takes office. Speaking on Friday, he repeated his vow to carry out the "largest deportations in the history of our country," starting in Springfield and Aurora, Colorado, where online rumors have exaggerated isolated incidents of Venezuelan gang activity.
"This is Hitlerian rhetoric," USA Today columnist Rex Huppke wrote on social media in response to Trump's statement. "That's not being hyperbolic. He's dehumanizing legal immigrants, and for some reason saying he'll deport Haitians to Venezuela. I've followed Trump since the beginning. He has devolved to his most base, hateful level, an often incoherent racist."
Schools and city buildings in Springfield have received bomb threats in recent days after Trump and his running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance elevated unfounded online rumors that newly arrived Haitian immigrants in the city were stealing and eating pets. One journalist referred to the Trump campaign's rhetoric as "blood libel."
Around 12,000 to 15,000 Haitian immigrants have moved to Springfield in recent years, and the overwhelming majority are there legally with temporary protected status.
"The majority of Americans who reject this dark and dystopic vision and the lies courting violence should come together to denounce this outrageous spectacle of hatred and to chart a different direction for our nation."
"It's essential to recognize the larger strategy on display from the Republican Party and their allies," Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America's Voice, said in a statement Friday. "The lies and conspiracies about Haitians are part of a larger volume of anti-immigrant and dehumanizing rhetoric that actively courts political violence."
Cárdenas continued: "In addition to the lies about Haitians, which echo tropes like the antisemitic blood libel, Trump described this nation in increasingly violent and graphic terms... What's the potential response from an unhinged supporter hearing those words and believing those threats? It is violence like the Haitian community is fearful of, and Jewish, Latino, and Black Americans have already experienced in places like Pittsburgh, El Paso, and Buffalo."
Cárdenas also referenced a promise Trump made last Saturday that his mass deportations would be "bloody."
"The majority of Americans who reject this dark and dystopic vision and the lies courting violence should come together to denounce this outrageous spectacle of hatred and to chart a different direction for our nation," Cárdenas said.
Meanwhile, an immigrant rights group in Colorado also spoke up against Trump's deportation threats.
"Trump's fear mongering is as dangerous as it is dishonest," Gladis Ibarra, the co-executive director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, said in a statement. "He doesn't care about Aurora or Colorado. He's using us as political pawns to push a racist agenda that paints our entire community in a bad light, and we won't fall for it. Immigrants are our teachers, our neighbors, our parents, and our children. We will not let them be demonized or ripped from our communities."
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'Blood Libel': Critics Say Trump-Vance Racist Attacks Stoking Chaos in Springfield, Ohio
"Trump and Vance are trying to start a race riot," said one New York Times columnist.
Sep 13, 2024
For the second consecutive day on Friday, schools in Springfield, Ohio were forced to close after receiving bomb threats as the city remained at the center of a political firestorm after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, his running mate Sen. JD Vance, and other prominent Republicans have spread unproven rumors and racist smears about Haitian migrants in the city.
A spokesperson for the school district said Perrin Woods Elementary School, Snowhill Elementary School, and Cliff Park High School were among the public buildings that were forced to evacuate, and Roosevelt Middle School administrators closed the school for the day based on information received from the Springfield Police Department.
Other city business also ground to a halt as the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the Ohio License Bureau Southside received emailed threats.
Police said they were working to determine the source of the threats. On Thursday, Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said the nature of the bomb threat that came in via email made clear it was a "hateful response to immigration in our town."
But hours after Rue said that it was "frustrating when national politicians, on the national stage, mischaracterize what is actually going on and misrepresent our community," Vance persisted in spreading bigoted misinformation on the social media platform X.
The junior senator from Ohio repeated a claim that "there has been a massive rise in communicable diseases" in Springfield due to an influx of Haitian migrants, about 12,000-15,000 of whom have moved to the city in recent years and have received a warm welcome from many employers.
Authorities have said reports of a rise in diseases in Springfield are false, as are claims—also spread widely by politicians including Vance and Trump, that Haitian immigrants have been stealing and eating people's pets in the city.
Condemning Vance's latest diatribe, John DiLillo said that if Springfield suffers actual violence following the threats, "it will be his fault."
Trump also continued attacking the Haitian community on Friday, saying in a speech that immigrants have "descended upon" the town and "destroyed the way of life."
Republican lawmakers and activists have frequently said they support "legal immigration" and aim to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants into the U.S.—a topic Trump quickly pivoted to on Friday when asked by a reporter why his campaign continues to focus on Springfield. The majority of Haitian people in Springfield are authorized to be in the U.S., with some benefiting from the Temporary Protected Status program.
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie warned against reducing the Trump campaign's outlandish lies about Haitian people in Springfield—ones that have also been spread by neo-Nazis—to an election season meme.
"What they're doing is called a blood libel," said Bouie. "It is smearing a group of people with the accusation that they are killing, in the case of Jews in medieval Europe, killing children, in the case of Haitian immigrants in 2024 United States, killing pets and eating them... And the purpose and the point of a blood libel is to incite violence... to drive people to commit violence against others out of fear, anger, and hatred."
"Trump and Vance are trying to start a race riot," he added.
President Joe Biden addressed the issue on Friday in a speech, saying the Trump's campaign attacks on Haitian immigrants are "simply wrong."
"It has no place in America," said the president. "He has to stop what he's doing."
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Lies About Haitians Reflect America's Racist Imperialism
The ‘Haitians eat pets’ tale is the latest in a long line of anti-Haitian claims that goes back to the nation's slave revolt nearly 200 years ago—a struggle against slavery, colonialism, and white supremacy.
Sep 13, 2024
A crass new iteration of anti-Haitianism has recently received a remarkable amount of attention. This novel form of racism with deep anti-Black roots was even referenced in this week's U.S. presidential debate.
Recently racist and ignorant social media users have circulated the idea that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating pets. Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance greatly boosted the anti-Haitian claim with a post to X stating, “Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country.”
Vance’s X post had over 11 million views with Donald Trump even referencing the claim in the presidential debate. This despite an absence of any evidence whatsoever. Springfield officials haven’t received any credible reports of Haitian immigrants abducting and eating pets.
The ‘Haitians eat pets’ tale is the latest in a long line of anti-Haitian claims. In the early 1980s Haitians were stigmatized as the originators of the HIV virus in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) labeled Haitians as a risk group, which gave rise to “The Four H’s” designation of Homosexuals, Hemophiliacs, Heroin addicts, and Haitians. At the time the Canadian Red Cross publicly identified Haitians as a “high-risk” group for AIDS, the only nationality singled out. In 1983 they called on homosexuals and bisexuals with multiple partners, intravenous drug users, hemophiliacs and recent immigrants from Haiti to voluntarily stop giving blood. A Canadian government pamphlet, which was distributed in shopping malls, also linked Haitians with AIDS. Again, this was despite a lack of evidence that the incidence of AIDS in Haiti was greater than in the U.S. By 1987 it was lower in Haiti than in the U.S. and other Caribbean nations.
But, as a result of the unfounded stigmatization, the country’s significant tourism basically collapsed overnight. Out of fear the virus may transmit through goods, some Haitian exports were even blocked from entering the U.S.
The Haitians are responsible for AIDS allegation still pops up. During an explosion of xenophobia against Haitian migrants in Guyana in 2019, reports focused on HIV/AIDS and Voodoo and in a 2016 radio outburst former Canadian Member of Parliament, André Arthur, labeled Haiti a “sexually deviant” country populated by thieves and prostitutes responsible for HIV/AIDS.
In another example of stigmatizing Haitians over disease, CDC incident manager for the Haiti cholera response, Jordan W. Tappero, blamed Haitian cultural norms for the 2010 cholera outbreak that caused tens of thousands of deaths. He told Associated Press journalist Jonathan Katz that Haitians don’t experience the “shame associated with open defecation.” As was then suspected and later confirmed, cholera was introduced to Haiti by UN forces who followed poor sanitation practices.
Ten months earlier influential U.S. pastor Pat Robertson suggested the terrible January 2010 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas was due to a “deal made with Satan” two centuries earlier. Robertson claimed Haitians “were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever … And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’” Robertson added, “You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.”
Canadian Protestant groups have promoted similar thinking about the August 1791 Bwa Kayiman (Bois Caïman) Vodou ceremony that helped launch the Haitian Revolution. In the book “Haiti’s Pact with the Devil?: Bwa Kayiman, Haitian Protestant Views of Vodou, and the Future of Haiti,” Bertin M. Louis points out that some Haitian Canadian Protestants believe Haiti was consecrated to the devil. Mainstream Canadian voices have repeatedly denigrated voodoo.
After the 2004 US/France/Canada coup the National Post published an editorial headlined “Voodoo is not enough”, arguing for “a coalition of the willing to permanently extract the country from the quagmire. A 1952 Globe and Mail story attempting to be sympathetic to the country began by noting, “Haiti’s principal export is not, as popularly supposed, Zombies.” One of the first books to expose North Americans to the voodoo zombie was Magic Island, a 1929 book by William Buehler Seabrook. The book sensationalized encounters with voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls.
Voodoo has been demonized by white supremacist and Christian forces for over two centuries. Important for defeating slavery and securing Haitian independence, the religion offered spiritual/ideological strength to those who revolted against their slave masters in maybe the greatest example of liberation in the history of humanity.
The 1791-1804 Haitian Revolution was simultaneously a struggle against slavery, colonialism, and white supremacy. Defeating the French, British, and Spanish empires, it led to freedom for all people regardless of color, decades before this idea found traction in Europe or North America. The Haitian revolt rippled through the region and compelled the post-French Revolution government in Paris to abolish slavery in its Caribbean colonies. It also spurred London’s 1807 Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.
The Haitian Revolution led to the world’s first and only successful large-scale slave revolution. “Arguably,” notes Peter Hallward, “there is no single event in the whole of modern history whose implications were more threatening to the dominant global order of things.”
But, in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution thousands of photos, articles and books denigrated Haiti, depicting the slaves as barbaric despite the fact 350,000 Africans were killed, versus 75,000 Europeans, over the 13-year revolt. Anti-Haitianism has deep roots.
It’s easy to mock those who claim Haitian immigrants are eating cats. But overt anti-Haitianism is also relayed by ‘sophisticated’ liberals. Their high-minded commentaries calling for foreign tutelage of the country appear regularly in the pages of the Globe and Mail and Boston Globe.
Anti-Haitianism flows out of and reinforces the country’s weakness, which is spurred by imperial domination. Technically “independent” for more than two centuries, outsiders have long shaped Haitian affairs. Through isolation, economic asphyxiation, debt dependence, gunboat diplomacy, occupation, foreign supported dictatorships, structural adjustment programs, “democracy promotion”, coups and rigged elections, Haiti is no stranger to the various forms of foreign political manipulation.
JD Vance’s anti-Haitian musings have deep roots in centuries of anti-Black racism and U.S. imperial ambitions. All those who fail to support real Haitian independence are tainted by this legacy and present-day reality.
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