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During his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday night, former President Donald Trump made an outlandish accusation: that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio have been eating their neighbor’s pets.
“They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said as he responded to a question about immigration. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
ABC News anchor and debate co-moderator David Muir quickly fact-checked the former president, citing the Springfield city manager’s assertion that there have been no credible reports of any such events taking place.
In reality, the conspiracy theory seems to be a gross misrepresentation of an incident that took place in Canton, Ohio — 160 miles away from Springfield — where reports of an individual attacking a cat have been falsely attributed to a Haitian migrant. The false narrative then gained traction with far-right activists and neo-Nazi groups before spreading into the broader conservative media bloodstream.
Trump’s running mate JD Vance has also shared his support for the theory. “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” Vance wrote on X.
And although he has yet to echo this particular narrative, U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-AL, is now chiming in with his own batch of misinformation to smear these groups of legal migrants.
On Wednesday, Tuberville criticized the Biden administration’s Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan (CHNV) Parole Program which has created legal pathways for up to 30,000 migrants from those countries looking to find refuge in the U.S.
Tuberville said that the program “is another abuse of this White House of trying to find any way possible that they can get people into this country that possibly can get them [to] go to the ballot box and vote Democrat. I mean, it’s amazing to me what they’re trying to do in clear sight, and Haitians are just another part of it. But it’s another part of being overrun in this country by people that shouldn’t be here.”
Tuberville’s comments feed into misleading rhetoric that has become normalized under Trump’s leadership of the GOP. Noncitizens cannot vote in the United States despite Republicans like Tuberville claiming that the Democrats are intentionally increasing the rate of immigration — apparently both illegal and legal — as a part of some ploy to amass greater electoral support.
Important to note, the Biden administration has kept Trump’s Title 42 policy in place which was implemented at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to rapidly expel illegal migrants without giving them an opportunity to seek U.S. protection. Biden has also deported a greater volume of border crossers than were expelled under Trump.
“They’re bringing them in and putting them in certain places,” Tuberville also said of the CHNV migrants — again implying that the policy is somehow orchestrated to place migrant populations in certain communities in an attempt to affect voter makeup.
“A lot of them are working; a lot of them aren’t working,” Tuberville continued. However, according to Jamie McGregor, the CEO of McGregor Metal, a Springfield company which makes welded parts for the auto and farm industries, the Haitian migrants are valuable employees.
“I wish I had 30 more. Our Haitian associates come to work every day. They don’t have a drug problem. They will stay at their machine. They will achieve their numbers. They are here to work. And so, in general, that’s a stark difference from what were used to in our community,” McGregor told PBS. “We want more jobs in our community. And in order to fill those jobs, some jobs need to be people who are not originally from here.”
The same sentiment is prevalent in Albertville, Alabama, where Haitian immigrants have been largely embraced by the community.
Tuberville went on to make further unsubstantiated claims about immigration. “Over 50 percent of the hotels in New York now are being housed by illegal immigrants,” he said. “Now that’s New York City where they’re 6, 7, 8, $900 a night. You’re paying for it as a taxpayer.”
In reality, illegal immigrants are not occupying half of New York City’s hotel rooms. What Tuberville appears to actually be referring to is a $77 million emergency contract which the city signed earlier this year to shelter migrant families at 15 hotels in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx for up to 28 days. The hotels provide temporary space for housing migrants when space runs out at city shelters.
The average cost to stay at a New York City hotel has increased, in part due to the temporary migrant housing, but as of the first quarter of 2024, the average room will cost you $230.79 per night — a far cry from Tuberville’s $900 figure. Tuberville’s 50 percent statistic is also unsubstantiated as only 135 of the city’s roughly 680 hotels participate in the shelter program.
Regardless, Tuberville’s comments have nothing to do with CHNV migrants as they came to this country through completely legal channels. These are not illegal immigrants, and the Senator risks greatly misleading Alabamians and Americans writ-large by characterizing them as such.
Still, Tuberville continued to use the opportunity to rally against illegal immigration.
“We’re probably spending $10 billion a month on illegal immigrants in this country, maybe even more than that,” he said. “And you remember, when President Trump was president, he wanted $5 billion to build a wall, and they said, ‘That’s way too much money.’ Folks, we are spending your taxpayer money every day. It is a disaster.”
It is unclear where Tuberville’s $10 billion a month estimate originates, nor is it clear how Donald Trump’s border wall proposal would affect the legal immigration of CHNV migrants through Biden’s Parole Program. Tuberville also neglects to acknowledge the estimated $321 billion in total GDP which undocumented workers contribute to the U.S. economy each year, as well as the fact that such populations commit crime at far lower rates than natural-born Americans.
From 1990 to 2013 — a time period during which the undocumented population in the U.S. tripled in size — violent crime in the country decreased by 48 percent. However, Tuberville claims that recent migration surges are creating “a disaster waiting to happen with national security.”
The GOP appears unconcerned with spreading false and misleading narratives that have the potential to put already-vulnerable migrant populations in harm’s way. In Springfield, it is already being reported that Haitian residents are “afraid for their lives” as crimes targeting the population have surged only days after Trump’s debate comments.
