No, Immigrants Are Not Eating Pets in Ohio

Before anyone ask me: no, immigrants are not eating dogs and cats here in Ohio.

Let’s back up a little so that I can explain why this is even a question. Last night ABC aired the first, and probably only, Trump versus Harris presidential debate. In case you didn’t catch all the fun, I live tweeted it. Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris, dressed in a meticulously tailored suit and Stiletto heels, carefully laid out her policy proposals and made a lot of funny horrified faces while Republican candidate, TV’s Donald Trump, dressed in a wrinkled suit with lifts in his shoes, lost his temper and screamed that she was letting millions of undocumented immigrants into the country. He couldn’t stop talking about undocumented immigrants. No matter what question he was asked, he answered by yelling about immigrants. Trump claimed they were coming in here from jails and “insane asylums;” he also repeated, baselessly, that America is having a crime wave while other countries’ crime rates are going down because they send all their criminals to live here. When confronted with the  fact that he was lying, Trump claimed that the FBI was committing fraud.

At one point, he made an extremely bizarre claim: “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. 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.”

Trump stammered back that he saw it on TV so it must be true. “people on television say their dogs were taken and used for food.”

The reason for this bizarre outburst comes out of Ohio, of course.

This all started because there has been an influx of about 15.000 Haitian immigrants in Springfield. These immigrants are not here illegally; they mostly came here seeking asylum, which is legal. They have work permits. They came to live in Springfield not to cause trouble, but because they were hired to work in industries in the area. Like many towns in Ohio, Springfield had experienced a decline in jobs and in population in the last several decades, but is currently having an economic boom. The bosses of the industries in town decided to hire immigrants to fill their job openings. The immigrants needed housing, schools and other services, so suddenly the price of rent went up for everyone. There was a strain on the city infrastructure and on benefits like Medicaid. I’m not trying to downplay that strain. But it would have been exactly the same strain if they’d suddenly had 15,ooo immigrants from Finland or Sweden coming to work in their factories– or 15,000 American workers from Steubenville, for that matter. The fact is, the industries decided to hire cheap labor and the immigrants came because they were hired. Now they’re here, and the city has struggled to accommodate the sudden population growth.

The influx of immigrants has not brought with it an influx of crime. This isn’t surprising as immigrants tend to commit less crime than citizens overall. Crime rates in Springfield haven’t gone up. There was, however, a fatal accident last year when a  mini van that was being driven by a Haitian immigrant, Hermanio Joseph, who was speeding and didn’t have a driver’s license, crossed the center line and collided with a school bus. The accident injured 23 people and killed one child, Aiden Clark. There’s nothing I can say to express my horror at that tragedy. It can’t be downplayed. But Joseph, who will spend the next decade in prison, didn’t do that because he was Haitian. Driving unlicensed isn’t some kind of Hatian crime. I know plenty of natural born American citizens right here in Steubenville who drive unlicensed and recklessly; I follow the court cases when they’re arrested because their lack of regard for others’ safety infuriates me. This isn’t a problem that came to Ohio from overseas. Still, that crime seems to have been the touchstone for a great deal of anti-immigrant sentiment. There was even a white supremacist neo-Nazi march there in early August. And many Springfield citizens decried that march. Two weeks later, the mayor ejected one neo-Nazi from a town meeting on August 27th, where he was trying to give a speech warning everyone of the supposed dangers of immigrants.

This neo-Nazi introduced himself by a fake name which is a derivative of “N*te H*ggers,” which is a spoonerism for an extremely offensive racial slur. He said he was “of the Blood Tribe.” The Blood Tribe is a well documented neo-Nazi group. He started in on a speech accusing Haitian immigrants of violence, and was quickly expelled from the meeting. That seems to be where the rumors started that Haitian immigrants were abducting and eating pets and local wildlife in Springfield.

There have been NO reported cases of immigrants poaching wildlife or stealing people’s pets in Springfield. That’s just not happening. The Springfield police and the city manager have insisted this is a hoax. The only report that anyone can find of someone stealing and mutilating a pet in Ohio is from three weeks ago, in Canton, Ohio. Canton (which is pronounced CAN-tin and not Can-TON like the city in China, in case you wanted to know) is in Northeastern Ohio near Lake Erie. Springfield is near Dayton almost all the way out to Indiana. Canton and Springfield are over 170 miles apart. I don’t know whether the person who decapitated that cat in Canton is of Haitian heritage, but she’s not an immigrant. Still, the mugshot from her arrest was a picture of a Black woman. That seems to be all conspiracy theorists needed to claim that Haitians were stealing Springfield’s cats, as well as the waterfowl from their parks, and eating them. Next thing you know, the conspiracy theory was going viral all over the internet, complete with memes of adorable kittens and ducks in danger. As evidence for this rumor, I saw people sharing a photo of a Black man holding a dead Canada goose, but as far as I’ve been able to gather, that’s a photo of a non-immigrant holding some roadkill and was taken in Columbus on Cleveland Avenue. I’ll bet these conspiracy theorists think all Black people look the same, and I’ll bet they can’t find Springfield or Canton on a map. I’ll bet they can’t even tell the difference between Cleveland and Cincinnati or pronounce “Scioto river.”  But suddenly, they all pretended to care deeply about Ohio’s citizens and their pets.

Speaking of people who claim to care about Ohio citizens, the most famous person to spread this hoax was vice presidential candidate J. D. Vance.

Vance doesn’t like the citizens of Ohio very much. He wrote an entire memoir claiming Ohio’s working class are fat and lazy and to blame for our own problems. But he hates immigrants a great deal more than he hates citizens. He added to this chaos by posting to his social media: “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?” and then the next day,  “In the last several weeks, my office has received many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who’ve said their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants. It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false. Do you know what’s confirmed? That a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here. In short, don’t let the crybabies in the media dissuade you, fellow patriots. Keep the cat memes flowing.”

In other words, Vance knew that the story about pets was likely just a blood libel-style conspiracy theory designed to incite anger against immigrants. But he’s encouraging his followers to spread the lies anyway because he thinks immigrants deserve it. And he’s lying about Hermanio Joseph as well. Joseph didn’t commit “murder.” He was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and vehicular homicide, not murder which is an entirely different crime. That’s bad enough. And he didn’t “have no right to be here.” He was in the country legally with an ID.  Mr. Joseph committed a serious crime, and he deserves the sentence he got for that crime, but the candidate for vice president of the United States is misrepresenting him and his crime in order to incite hatred of fifteen thousand mostly law-abiding people who are here in Ohio because they were hired by Ohio businesses and given work permits by the United States government.

Meanwhile, the parents of the child Mr. Joseph killed are furious that their son’s death is being exploited for political talking points against immigrants.

Nathan Clark is the father of Aiden Clark, the boy who died in that crash. He stated on Tuesday: “You know, I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would ever say something so blunt. But if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone. The last thing that we need is to have the worst day of our lives, violently and constantly shoved in our faces. But even that’s not good enough for them. They take it one step further. They make it seem as though our wonderful Aiden appreciates your hate. That we should follow their hate And look what you’ve done to us. We have to get up here and beg them to stop. Using Aiden as a political tool is, to say the least, reprehensible for any political purpose. And speaking of morally bankrupt… politicians Bernie Marino, Chip Roy, JD Vance and Donald Trump then spoke in my son’s name and used his death for political gain. This needs to stop now. They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants. The border crisis, and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members. However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio. I will listen to them one more time to hear their apologies. To clear the air, my son, Aiden Clark, was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti. This tragedy is felt all over this community, this state and even the nation. But don’t spin this towards hate. In order to live like Aiden, you need to accept everyone. Choose to shine. Make the difference. Lead the way and be the inspiration. What many people in this community and state and nation are doing is the opposite of what you should be doing.”

Mr. Vance is a Catholic. He ought to know that calumny is a mortal sin. That ought to matter to him.

He is also a Senator representing the state of Ohio. It’s his business to protect Ohio’s interests in Washington. But right now he’s wasting time inciting violence against thousands of human beings who are in Ohio legally, contributing to Ohio’s economy and paying taxes to the state. That’s what happens when you spread lies about a vulnerable group; you incite somebody who believes you to react violently to the perceived danger. He is dredging up the pain  and trauma of one Ohio family in a way that is reprehensible to them in order to incite that hate. And in doing so, he’s making Ohio a laughingstock and  disgrace all over the world.

This is the vortex of tragedy and nonsense that led Donald Trump to claim, in last nights debate, that “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats.”

I think it’s evident that Trump is so senile he has no understanding of what he’s doing anymore, but Vance was stoking hate deliberately.

Neither one of these men should ever hold office again.