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During Tuesday’s presidential debate, Donald Trump repeated a baseless and sensationalist claim about Haitian immigrants in Ohio allegedly eating dogs and other pets. By Friday—just three days after the debate—bomb threats had led to the evacuation and closure of public schools and municipal buildings for a second consecutive day, leaving Springfield residents understandably fearful of violence and discrimination.
Despite evidence of increasing violence, the Republican presidential nominee has doubled down on his claims — supported by others such as Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, and billionaire Elon Musk — about Haitians, which his supporters have eagerly embraced in a bid to further demonize immigrants. “We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country,” Trump insisted. “And we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora.”
Although Trump has become associated with these claims, as if he invented them himself, he was merely the amplifier. Here’s a look at the extremist group taking credit for creating and disseminating this racist conspiracy.
Tracing the Origins of Trump’s False Claims
The leader of the group Blood Tribe, Christopher Pohlhaus, celebrated on his Telegram channel on Wednesday, following the presidential debate between Trump and Kamala Harris. The neo-Nazi group had “pushed Springfield into the public consciousness,” Pohlhaus, known as “Hammer” to his followers, wrote on Telegram, according to NBC News.
“The president is talking about it now,” one of Blood Tribe’s members posted on Gab, a social network popular with the far right. “This is what real power looks like.”
A man carries an AI-generated image of former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump carrying cats away from Haitian immigrants, a reference to falsehoods spread about Springfield, Ohio, during a campaign rally for Trump at the Tucson Music Hall in Tucson, Arizona, September 12, 2024. (Photo by Rebecca NOBLE / AFP) (Photo by REBECCA NOBLE/AFP via Getty Images)
In late June, local Facebook groups in Ohio began posting about Haitian children allegedly chasing geese and ducks. Over the following weeks, a conspiracy emerged claiming that the ducks and geese were going missing and possibly being eaten by Haitian immigrants. The next month, Blood Tribe seized on these rumors, began posting about them on Telegram and Gab, and spoke at some of the town’s meetings.
I want to apologize. I've been saying that the GOP cooked up these fake Haitian stories a week ago as an election ploy.
But this young man was discussing issue as early as August 27. He attended a town hall meeting to speak out.
He's a leader in the Neo-Nazi group Blood Pride. pic.twitter.com/PcReF05muc
— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) September 10, 2024
On August 10, around a dozen masked Blood Tribe members, carrying banners adorned with swastikas, marched in downtown Springfield, calling it an “anti-Haitian Immigration march.”
The debunked claim Trump echoed, which was spread by the neo-Nazi group, was also traced back to a post by Erika Lee, who wrote on Facebook about a neighbor’s missing cat. She added that the neighbor suspected the cat was attacked by her Haitian neighbors, NewsGuard reported.
Newsguard, a media watchdog monitoring misinformation online, found that Lee was one of the first to publish a post about the rumor, and screenshots of it circulated online before she deleted it.
“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Lee, a Springfield resident, told NBC News on Friday.
Unlike Blood Tribe, Lee stated, “I’m not a racist,” explaining that her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that, and that was not my intent.”
