Social media users recently flooded platforms with unfounded rumors about Haitian immigrants in a small Ohio town.
The immigrants are feasting on neighborhood pets, as well as ducks and geese at local parks, the social media posts said.
But a city spokesperson told PolitiFact there are no credible reports this is happening.
A Sept. 6 Facebook post said, “Springfield is a small town in Ohio. 4 years ago they had 60K residents. Under (Kamala) Harris and (Joe) Biden, 20,000 Haitian immigrants were shipped to the town. Now ducks and pets are disappearing.”
The post included a screenshot from a private Facebook group in which a person wrote that a neighbor’s daughter’s friend came home from work to find a pet cat butchered and hanging from a tree in a Haitian neighbor’s yard. The post’s author said Haitians were doing the same to dogs and ducks and geese at a local park. Next to the screenshot was a photo of a Black man walking down a street holding what appears to be a dead goose.
We found one or both images being shared in other social media posts. Another X post shared a video of what it said was a Haitian immigrant eating a neighbor’s dead cat.
The Facebook post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)
(Facebook screenshot)
The claim that Haitian immigrants are eating wildlife and pets in Springfield was also widely shared by conservative influencers such as Charlie Kirk and X owner Elon Musk, and political entities and figures including the House Judiciary Committee and vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio.
“Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio,” Vance wrote Sept. 9 on X. “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?” he wrote, in an apparent reference to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Besides the social media posts, there are articles on conservative media sites reporting on a resident’s claims at an Aug. 27 Springfield City Commission meeting. Some of the articles also share the screenshot of the Facebook group post and the man holding a dead bird.
At that hearing, Anthony Harris, a man describing himself as a social media influencer, said the immigrants are in the park grabbing ducks by their necks and cutting their heads off. He provided no evidence to support his claim. We contacted him via Facebook private message but received no response.
The influx of migrants into the community has sparked controversy, particularly in August 2023, after a minivan driven by a Haitian immigrant who had a foreign license not valid in Ohio struck a school bus, killing an 11-year-old boy, The New York Times reported.
During the first presidential debate between Harris and Donald Trump, the former president repeated the false claim.
“In Springfield (Ohio), they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” he said in Philadelphia on Sept. 10.
Fact-checking Harris and Trump’s first 2024 debate
PolitiFact fact-checked the first 2024 presidential debate Tuesday night between Harris and Trump.
PolitiFact has fact-checked Harris 55 times since 2012 and Trump 1,050 times since 2011.
We draw on that deep archive to check the accuracy of the candidates’ statements.
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Trump’s wrong on abortion claims
Trump: “They even have … he said, ‘The baby we will be born, and we will decide what to do with the baby.’”
False.
Trump said West Virginia. He meant Virginia.
Former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a physician, never said he would sanction the execution of newborns. What he did say during a radio interview is that in rare, late-pregnancy cases when fetuses are nonviable, doctors deliver the baby, keep it comfortable, resuscitate it if the mother wishes, and then have a “discussion” with the mother.
The issue is that Northam declines to say what that discussion would entail. Trump puts words in the governor’s mouth, saying doctors would urge the mother to let them forcibly kill the newborn, which is a felony in Virginia punishable by a long prison sentence or death.
Trump: “Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted (abortion) to be brought back to the states where the people could vote.”
The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision inspired legions of supporters and opponents. Before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it in 2022, numerous legal scholars wrote briefs urging the court to uphold the ruling.
Some legal scholars who favor abortion rights have criticized the 1973 ruling’s legal underpinnings, saying that different constitutional arguments, based on equal protection, would have provided a stronger case. But legal experts, including some who held this view, said those scholars would not have advocated for overturning Roe on this basis.
Jobs under Biden-Harris are not ‘a fraud’
Jobs under Biden-Harris are not ‘a fraud’
Trump: “It was a fraud, just like their number of 818,000 jobs that they said they created turned out to be a fraud.”
The federal agency that calculates how many people are working handed Democrats an unwelcome present during their August national convention in Chicago: a downward adjustment of the past year’s employment gains by 818,000 jobs.
But Trump claimed the Biden-Harris administration was cooking the books, calling it “fraud” during the debate. However, economists across the ideological spectrum reject Trump’s claim. The process is an annual effort to fine-tune initial data that the agency acknowledges is imperfect.
Immigrants “taking over” buildings in Aurora, Colorado
Trump: “You look at Aurora in Colorado. (Immigrants) are taking over. The town said, (they’re) taking over buildings, they’re going in violently, these are the people that she and Biden led into our country, and they’re destroying our country.”
Aurora, Colorado, officials dispute this narrative.
They report that Venezuelan gangs are not taking over apartment complexes and forcing residents to pay them rent.
Residents of The Edge at Lowry apartments said the company that owns the building, CBZ Management, caused the poor living conditions in the apartments, not Venezuelan gang members.
Four members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, were arrested in Aurora in connection with a shooting that occurred at a different apartment building owned by CBZ Management.
Harris says Trump will impose a sales tax
Harris: “Economists have said that the Trump sales tax would actually result for middle class families in about $4,000 more a year because of his policies and his ideas about what should be the backs of middle class people paying for tax cuts for billionaires.”
Trump has repeatedly proposed wide-ranging tariffs on foreign goods, including an across-the-board tariff of 10% to 20% and a 60% levy on goods from China. Although tariffs are imposed separately from the tax system, consumers would feel their impact much the same way as taxes.
However, the specific dollar impact on consumers varies. Two estimates we found generally support Harris’ $4,000 figure; two show a smaller, though still significant, impact.
PolitiFact Executive Director Aaron Sharockman, Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson, Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman, Staff Writers Grace Abels, Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu, Maria Briceño, Jeff Cercone, Madison Czopek, Marta Campabadal Graus, Samantha Putterman, Sara Swann, Loreben Tuquero, Maria Ramirez Uribe, Researcher Caryn Baird, KFF Health News Senior Editor Stephanie Stapleton and KFF Health News Senior Correspondent Stephanie Armour contributed to this story.
Our debate fact-checks rely on both new and previously reported work. We link to past work whenever possible. In some cases, a fact-check rating may be different tonight than in past versions. In those cases, either details of what the candidate said, or how the candidate said it, differed enough that we evaluated it anew.