Claims of immigrants eating pets: Like Scott Jensen’s claim of ‘furries’ in Minnesota schools

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It’s like deja vu all over again.

As part of his comments during the Sept. 10 presidential debate, former President Donald Trump went from the general issue of immigrants in the U.S. to those specifically in Springfield, Ohio, and said, “They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live in Springfield, Ohio.”

This is so reminiscent of Minnesota’s 2022 gubernatorial race, during which Republican candidate Scott Jensen said at a Hutchinson rally: “What are they doing to our kids? … Why do we have litter boxes in some of the school districts so they can pee in them because they identify as a ‘furry’? We’ve lost our minds … .”

Jensen was feeding into the fear of gay and transgender students to gain votes, much like Trump feeding into voter fears of immigrants. In both cases, they created myths to justify bad behavior and to gain the votes of those believing the lie.

Republicans pushed the lie of furries all during 2022, despite no one ever finding a furry — someone who identifies as an animal — in our schools or anywhere else. No school admitted to having a litter box. I even called my old high school’s superintendent to find out if those lurid rumors of children hissing and barking in class were true. A very indignant administrator yelled at me: “There are no furries in this school!”

So it is with the vicious rumors of Haitian immigrants killing and eating people’s pets in Springfield, a city of about 59,000 in southwestern Ohio. Once a bustling manufacturing city producing agricultural machinery, Springfield since the 1960s had lost a quarter of its population. Its economy was sluggish. Empty neighborhoods dotted the landscape.

City leaders thought an infusion of eager workers would keep existing businesses going and create new ones, so as many other employers have done, they recruited immigrant labor. By 2017, Haitian immigrants began arriving in Springfield.

Immigrants from Haiti and from Central America have been in high demand in Springfield, where they’ve been hired to clean and package produce for Springfield’s Dole Fresh Vegetables and at automotive machining plants. Employers were desperate for workers then and would be even more so in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

About 15,000 Haitians have moved into Springfield, most through a temporary protected status (TPS) program that grants immigrants an 18-month stay in the U.S. if they’re from one of 16 countries experiencing great violence and unrest. Its participants are legal immigrants, but the program is not a gateway to citizenship, and they must reapply after 18 months to stay longer.

City officials noted that companies had workers again, that the immigrant influx meant restaurants and food trucks had been opened, and that once-abandoned neighborhoods were bustling with residents.

But any time so many new residents arrive, schools and hospitals are stretched to their limits. The smoldering resentment ignited in August 2023 when an 11-year-old boy was thrown from a school bus after the driver swerved to avoid hitting an oncoming car driven by a Haitian driver without a driver’s license.

That’s when the neo-Nazi hate group called Blood Tribe, who had earlier graced South Dakota and Tennessee with its toxic presence, arrived in Springfield to intimidate immigrants and spread rumors about the Haitians.

That created a perfect environment for homegrown Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance to unleash a barrage of lies about the Haitians, including his statement that Springfield’s “illegal immigrants” are “causing chaos all across Springfield.”

It didn’t help that a Springfield woman named Erika Lee posted on her Facebook page that her neighbor had told her that her daughter’s friend had lost her cat only to find the pet strung up “from a branch” outside the home of a Haitian immigrant. The woman, who is of mixed race herself and has a half-Black daughter, later said she didn’t know the people supposedly losing their cat and never intended to target the Haitian community. She deleted the post, but the damage was done, providing yet more fuel for people only too eager to believe the worst of immigrants and of Black people.

Calling out the racism was Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, a nonprofit advocating for immigrants, who said, “The false claim that Black immigrants are violently attacking American families by stealing and killing their pets is a powerful and racist trope that puts a target on people’s backs and it is turbocharged in the era of MAGA when political violence has become commonplace and we have already witnessed violent incidents incited by such rhetoric.”

In response, both Springfield’s mayor and Ohio’s governor have insisted that charges of Haitian immigrants are patently false and that the threats and violence against Haitian immigrants and their supporters must stop.

Sadly, our Republican candidate for U.S. president has said nothing at all, and Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio, had the audacity to say he makes up rumors if he feels like it and basically washed his hands of the consequences of his lies.

It’s heartening that many Springfield residents are packing the Haitian restaurants and offering their support of the Haitians. But there needs to be an overall rejection of the racism and hate projected by politicians to win an election. Whether it’s targeting gay and transgender students or Black immigrants, this kind of bullying is not acceptable, and its perpetrators must face consequences.

Lois Thielen is a central Minnesota journalist, now retired as a longtime editorial columnist for the St. Cloud Times, and the author of six local history books. She and her husband farm near Grey Eagle, Minn.