SPRINGFIELD: Schools were evacuated Friday for a second day in a row in the small Ohio town of Springfield, according to local media, amid anti-Haitian-immigrant tensions stoked by Donald Trump and his Republican Party.
Springfield’s authorities closed a middle school and evacuated two elementary schools, the local Springfield News-Sun newspaper and other media reported.
The disruptions — which come after similar evacuations Thursday in reaction to a bomb threat — followed an unspecified warning from the Springfield police department, the reports said.
The head of the local Haitian community centre, Viles Dorsainvil, told AFP that the FBI was also investigating threatening phone calls to the organisation.
The Ohio town has been suddenly thrust into the national spotlight after a conspiracy theory spread on social media that the large community of Haitian immigrants has been stealing and eating the predominately white population’s pets.
The bizarre story took off last week with a post on social media site X claiming that “ducks and pets are disappearing.”
It was then quickly amplified by Republican politicians, X’s billionaire owner Elon Musk, and Trump himself — including during his nationally televised debate Tuesday with Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Trump, the Republican White House candidate, is seizing on the fake story to fuel his campaign message that the United States faces an “invasion” of illegal immigrants, whom he characterises as violent criminals and escapees from “insane asylums.”
On Thursday, Trump said that locals in Springfield faced “20,000 illegals” who were “destroying their entire way of life.”
“Nobody knows where they come from. I’m angry about young American girls being raped and sodomised and murdered by savage criminal aliens,” Trump added.
Father blasts hate
Trump’s vice presidential pick, Ohio Senator JD Vance, posted Friday on X that Springfield has seen “a massive rise in communicable diseases, rent prices, car insurance rates, and crime. This is what happens when you drop 20,000 people into a small community.”
The Haitian community in Springfield is part of an influx taking advantage of President Joe Biden’s pathway for migrants fleeing countries, like the Caribbean nation of Haiti, that are in upheaval.
The Ohio town had seen years of falling population and economic decline as manufacturing industries moved away.
The arrival of an estimated 20,000 Haitians has been credited with reviving the local economy, but has also put severe strains on public services in a town that the 2020 census found previously had a population of 58,000.
Tensions first erupted into the open last year when a recently arrived Haitian driver collided his minivan with a school bus, killing an 11-year-old boy, Aiden Clark.
Anti-immigrant activists have seized on that incident but the child’s father this week issued an impassioned plea for politicians to back off.
“They can vomit all the hate they want,” Nathan Clark said. “However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden.”
