Former President Trump on Thursday escalated his attacks on Haitian migrants in an Ohio city, days after he repeated a conspiracy on the debate stage that those migrants were eating pets.
Trump spoke in the border state of Arizona, where he hammered Vice President Harris over the surge of migrants at the southern border in recent years, likening it to a “military invasion” and claiming the country was being “occupied by a foreign element.”
He focused specifically on Springfield, Ohio, which has found itself at the center of the immigration debate after Trump and others elevated a false viral claim about the Haitian migrants there.
On Thursday, Trump called Haiti a “totally failed country” and said those migrants have put a strain on the community.
“There’s a place called Springfield, Ohio, that you’ve been reading about. Twenty-thousand illegal Haitian immigrants have descended upon the town of 58,000 people, destroying their entire way of life. This was a beautiful community and now it’s horrible what’s happened,” Trump said.
Many Haitians are in the U.S. under the protection of temporary protected status, which keeps people from being deported to nations in turmoil and allows them to work here. The Biden administration will allow an estimated 309,000 Haitians to remain in the U.S. through at least February 2026.
He echoed concerns from local officials that those migrants have strained social services, then repeated false claims that they are abducting animals.
Roughly 15,000 Haitian immigrants have arrived in Springfield, a town of about 60,000 people, in recent years, according to The Associated Press.
During Tuesday night’s debate, Trump amplified a debunked conspiracy theory about migrants in Springfield eating pets.
Springfield police and other city authorities denied any abductions had been reported, and City Manager Bryan Heck told The Hill the false controversy “takes away” from the city’s real struggles onboarding immigrants to social services.
“We checked with the city manager,” ABC News moderator David Muir said at the Philadelphia debate, saying officials found no evidence supporting the allegations of immigrants eating pets.
Harris appeared to laugh as Trump screamed, “They’re eating the dogs!”
Trump has repeatedly tried to attack Harris over immigration, branding her the “border czar” for her work addressing root causes of migration in Central American countries. Trump and his campaign have also highlighted the stories of Americans allegedly killed by migrants who entered the country illegally to argue the country is less safe because of Harris and her policies.
Polling has shown voters trust Trump more than Harris on the issue of immigration. She has sought to counter that by pointing to Trump’s role in tanking a bipartisan border security proposal earlier this year.