SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — The Haitian eatery cooks were preparing for Thursday’s lunch rush when the phone rang.“Got any cats or dogs?” a mocking voice asked.Romane Pierre, the 41-year-old manager of Rose Goute Creole, didn’t want to alarm his staff. They were already nervous. During the presidential debate barely 36 hours earlier, Republican nominee Donald Trump had targeted Haitians in Springfield, falsely accusing them of “eating the pets of the people that live there.”Pierre summoned his customer-service politeness.“No,” he replied, “but we have chicken and pork.”A crackpot call was a minor disruption compared with that morning’s bomb threat on city hall, conveyed in a message the mayor described as “hateful” toward immigrants. By Friday, two elementary schools in this southwestern Ohio city had gone into lockdown and evacuated their students. Pierre’s team, who usually kept the restaurant open late, decided to close before dark.Advertisement“Everyone’s scared,” he said, keeping an eye on the glass entrance.The incendiary claims about immigrants that Trump echoed to millions of Americans have turned a dangerous spotlight on those in the cities he keeps name-checking: Springfield and Aurora, Colo., a Denver suburb where he has repeatedly asserted Venezuelan criminals are “taking over.”“We’re going to get these people out,” he said in a news conference Friday, intensifying his attack and promising to stage “the largest deportation in the history of our country” if reelected.Trump’s words don’t reflect their reality, more than a dozen immigrants said in interviews this week. But his rhetoric, which right-wing news sources and social media have greatly amplified, triggered alarm in places grappling with culture clashes.In Springfield, where the Haitian population has soared since 2020, some from the Caribbean nation have been keeping their children home from school, community organizers say, fearing bullying or worse. Others have reported harassment on the street, in their cars and at stores.In Aurora, a large and proudly diverse city where thousands of Venezuelans began arriving in 2022, numerous migrants said they have been told their nationality makes them ineligible for jobs or housing. Residents of buildings that some officials have alleged are under gang control said the false rumors have led to threats and even drawn armed groups to the properties — claiming to offer protection, vigilante-style.And in both cities, despite officials challenging or debunking Trump’s accusations and calling for more levelheaded dialogue, the former president has doubled down.Advertisement“I am angry about Venezuelan gangs taking over Aurora, Colorado,” he said Thursday at a rally in Arizona, “and illegal Haitian migrants taking over a beautiful place … Springfield, Ohio.”The Haitians in Springfield are here legally, the city manager has explained at public meetings. According to police, there is no evidence any had stolen any cat, dog or other pet or contributed disproportionately to crime.Rather, business leaders explain, they are filling jobs that would otherwise sit open, propelling growth after a painful chapter of economic decline.But the population boom, by all accounts, has strained resources. Housing is costlier. Traffic has picked up. Classrooms are packed. Wait times are longer at doctors’ offices.Over the last quarter-century, the once-prosperous manufacturing hub hollowed out to nearly 60,000 residents as factories shuttered. When a rebound finally began, with new plants and warehouses opening, the burst of blue-collar roles quickly attracted immigrants to the overwhelmingly White area. Since the pandemic, according to city estimates, roughly 20,000 Haitians have arrived.Tensions erupted in August when a Haitian driver without a valid license hit a school bus that then tipped over, killing an 11-year-old boy and injuring 23 other children. Springfield found itself in the center of a media storm, setting the stage for the flood of cat memes on Lindsay Aimé’s iPhone screen.AdvertisementAimé, a 34-year-old warehouse interpreter fluent in French and Haitian Creole, had settled in Springfield for a job he hoped would better support his family. Back home, he’d worked as a lawyer. Then gunmen assassinated Haiti’s president in 2021, and gangs seized control of most of the country, destroying his livelihood.Every morning, he checks his phone to make sure his 12-year-old son, who still lives on the island with an aunt, was safe. This week, the boy wanted to know: What was going on in Ohio?“Are people eating cats there?” he texted. “Yuck!”Absolutely not, Aimé replied. He could barely handle an American servin …
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