Haitian-American community leaders and organizations rebuked former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, for repeating false claims this week that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating household pets and demanded a retraction of the statements.

During his Tuesday night debate with Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris on ABC, Trump, the GOP’s presidential pick, pushed a baseless, xenophobic, viral, right wing social media conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are “eating the dogs” and “eating the cats” — that they’re “eating the pets of the people that live there.” 

Vance made similar claims a day before the debate.  

City officials told multiple media outlets this is unsubstantiated. 

The claims were swiftly debunked by fact-checking news outlets and widely criticized by groups representing Haitian Americans. 

The National Haitian-American Elected Officials Network lambasted the remarks as “reckless rhetoric” and underscored that they perpetuate “harmful stereotypes” that “undermines the fabric of our diverse nation.”

“We will not allow xenophobic rhetoric to overshadow the truth of our people’s positive impact,” the organization wrote in a statement shared with Capital B. The organization is demanding the Trump-Vance campaign retract “offensive statements and engage in meaningful dialogue to address the harm caused.”

“The Haitian immigrant community are not puppets for political games,” the organization’s chairwoman, North Miami Vice Mayor Mary Estimé-Irvin, said in the statement.

The Trump-Vance campaign in a statement said that there are “real” issues impacting the people of Ohio, but did not directly address calls from that community for a retraction and a conversation. 

“We hope the media will continue to cover the stories of the very real suffering and tragedies experienced by the people of Springfield, Ohio, which have been largely ignored by the liberal mainstream media until now. While the media may find these stories and experiences unimportant and inconvenient, President Trump will continue giving a voice to Americans who are expressing their concerns about the influx of illegals and rising migrant crime in their communities,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary, said in a statement.

Experts in politics and Black history said the remarks tap into racist misinformation, perpetuating a macabre historical narrative about Black people as dangerous and “other.” 

Haiti boasts a rich mélange of African and Caribbean cultural traditions, roots in revolt against enslavement and a history that extends back to and is intertwined with the first century of America’s founding. Haitians have left an indelible imprint on U.S. culture and politics. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are more than 1.1 million people in the U.S. with Haitian ancestry — many of them living in enclaves in and near Miami, New York, and New Jersey, among other areas.

The predominantly Black nation is also considered the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, with a history of immigration to American shores — sometimes during times of political upheaval.

As a result, they have also been a group exploited as a foil for those looking to peddle a particular brand of misinformation, political experts in Black studies said. 

The myth of the “scary Black” interloper who seeks to deny what some white Americans perceive as their birthright is an age-old trope, political experts said. 

“Haitian immigrants give you the perfect mix of ‘scary Black’ and also foreign,” said Alvin Tillery, a professor of political science and the director of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University. 

Such attacks are grounded in “anti-Blackness and anti-immigrant” sentiments that appeal to the segment of Trump’s base that is deeply uncomfortable with demographic shifts that show America is becoming more racially diverse, Tillery added. 

Anti-Black and anti-immigrant stereotypes are rhetorical techniques that Trump has used in past political cycles as a call-to-action to the nativist and racist segments of his base, political experts told Capital B. 

“We have long argued that Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is racially loaded,” said Andra Gillespie, a professor of political science and the director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute at Emory University. 

Trump has frequently criticized Black and brown immigrants 

In 2015, when Trump launched his initial bid for the presidency at Trump Tower, he claimed “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” He added: “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

It is a refrain he has repeated often.

Back in 2018, he called El Salvador, Haiti, and African nations “shithole countries” during a meeting with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House. 

The Washington Post reported that at the time, he wondered why the U.S. would offer immigration protections for people from those counties and suggested America would be better off encouraging immigration from Norway, a European nation that is predominantly white. 

Trump often criticized Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minnesota, who immigrated to the U.S. from Somalia with her family in the 1990s. In one particularly memorable episode, he maligned her and other members of the progressive Democratic group dubbed the “Squad,” telling them to “go back to where they came from.” Reps. Ayanna Pressley, D-Massachusetts, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, and Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan, are American-born.

Trump and Vance’s most recent comments also tie into broader standing stereotypes of Blacks and criminality, Gillespie said, pointing to the ways in which this particular false narrative could be read as an emotionally manipulative ploy and play on subconscious bias. 

“It’s stealing pets, which people hold near and dear to their hearts. And then there is the part about eating animals not commonly consumed in America,” she added, saying that could be a vague reference to wrongly held beliefs about voodoo.

Trump is merely the latest in a long line of some American presidents who, at times, have also leaned into racist political narratives, said Tillery, who also runs the 2040 Strategy Group, and the Super PAC  Alliance for Black Equality. 

When he was the governor of California, Ronald Regan and President Richard Nixon once shared a chuckle over calling United Nations delegates from African countries “monkeys.”

A decade of Trump rhetoric has shifted political rhetorical norms

Trump’s comments about Haitians have initial shock value, but a decade of Trump dominating headlines with similarly offensive rejoinders has dulled sensibilities, Gillespie said. 

“Ten years later, what we’ve seen is that Trump can say overtly racist stuff and be given a pass to say it,” she said. 

“The question we have today is not just is this a bridge too far, but are people going to respond to it positively or negatively. And, if negatively, how?”