Amid ongoing threats, Ohio GOP US Senate candidate calls for deporting Springfield legal immigrants

Terroristic threats continued against Springfield officials and public buildings over the weekend and into Monday. In the midst of them, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno called for the protected status of legal Haitian migrants in Springfield to be revoked and for them to be deported back to their violence-riven country.

The city in southwestern Ohio has been the center of a national political firestorm after former president Donald Trump in last Tuesday’s debate repeated a debunked claim that Haitian immigrants who have flocked to the community over the past five years were stealing neighbors’ pets and eating them. 

The claim has been debunked by public safety officials, Gov. Mike DeWine, and even one of the first people to post it on Facebook. She said she misunderstood what a neighbor told her about “an acquaintance of a friend” whose cat was missing.

Other GOP officials, including Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, have amplified rumors that Black immigrants to Springfield have been killing and eating geese. Officials said there was no evidence to support that claim, either.

Springfield’s health and education infrastructure has been strained as 12,000 to 15,000 Haitians fleeing chaos in their country have moved over the past five years to what had been a shrinking community. A big reason was the availability of warehouse and manufacturing jobs.

The strains and the influx of immigrants of color has sparked a wave of hatred. An armed neo-Nazi group marched through the city last month, and over the weekend, Ku Klux Klan fliers appeared in Springfield neighborhoods, saying, “Foreigners and Haitians Out.”

Schools, City Hall and other public buildings were evacuated and closed every day since Thursday due to bomb threats, some explicitly tied to the Haitian immigrants. Most recently, two elementary schools were evacuated on Monday after receiving bomb threats, WKEF reported. DeWine said Monday that “at least 33” bomb threats have been made.

Public officials have received death threats, and Mayor Rob Rue, Republican, on Friday blamed Trump and his running mate, Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance for the strife.

“All these federal politicians that have negatively spun our city, they need to know they’re hurting our city, and it was their words that did it,” Rue told Columbus TV station WSYX.

Despite Rue’s plea, Trump on Friday falsely claimed Springfield had been destroyed by the immigrants, who are in the United States legally, and promised to deport them. 

On Sunday, Vance appeared on CNN and defended his false statements about Springfield.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” he said, then adding that he was “creating the American media focusing on it.”

Moreno, a Cleveland car dealer who is challenging Democratic Ohio U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, went to Springfield on Saturday and called for the legal immigrants’ deportation.

“What’s happened is that Sherrod Brown and Kamala Harris have waved the magic wand, corrupted our immigration system and shielded them through Temporary Protected Status and asylum — two loopholes in our immigration system that were corrupted by corrupt politicians,” Moreno said, according to the Springfield News-Sun.

Asked on Monday if Moreno was concerned that such comments would encourage more hate and further threats, his spokeswoman took umbrage at the suggestion. Despite the Republican mayor’s admonishment, she attacked the press and linked the matter to an apparent assassination attempt Sunday against Trump at one of his South Florida golf courses.

“It is vile that the liberal media is blaming Republicans for these threats in Springfield — with no evidence — when a leftwing lunatic who echoed talking points from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris attempted to assassinate President Trump just yesterday,” the spokeswoman, Reagan McCarthy, said in an email. 

The man who allegedly wanted to shoot Trump, Ryan Wesley Routh, wrote that he voted for Trump, soured on him and then encouraged the Iranian government to assassinate the former president, the Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, the situation in Springfield continues to be tense

In addition to bomb threats leveled at schools, government buildings and health care facilities, Rue, city commissioners and staffers have received multiple death threats, WSYX reporter Darrel Rowland posted on X.

In midst of the tension, Rue discouraged a possible visit from Trump, which he is reportedly considering, and one from Vice President Kamala Harris, which hasn’t been mentioned, Rowland also posted.

Spectrum News’s Taylor Popielarz posted a list of public buildings that had been “placed on lockdown, evacuated, closed, or searched at some point over the last week due to threats.” There were 21 facilities, including eight educational institutions, four county buildings, three related to car and driver licensing, two health facilities, and two municipal government buildings.

For his part, Moreno, the Senate candidate, blames problems in Springfield not on false claims by Trump, Vance or himself, but on their political opponents.

“Kamala Harris and Sherrod Brown wreaked havoc on Springfield with their reckless decision to extend (temporary protected status) and allow thousands of unvetted migrants to resettle in Springfield, with no regard for the devastating effects it would have on the citizens of that community,” McCarthy, Moreno’s spokeswoman, said.

Brown isn’t part of the executive branch and the Department of Homeland Security determines whom to grant temporary protected status. So Brown wasn’t involved in that determination for the Haitians in Springfield.

It’s also false that the migrants there are unvetted. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services last month posted a document entitled “Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans.” It says that people from those counties receiving temporary protected status must “Undergo and clear robust security vetting.”

For his part, Brown, the senator whom Moreno is challenging, said it’s time to stop politicizing what’s happening in Springfield.

“Springfield reminds me of Mansfield, my hometown,” he said in a Monday post on X. “It’s a proud city with a rich manufacturing history. This community deserves better than to be used as a political pawn. We must work together to keep everyone safe & address the city’s challenges. That’s what I’ll keep doing.”

Moreno is himself an immigrant, moving with his family from Colombia to South Florida in the early 1970s. His father was a politically connected surgeon. Unlike the often-impoverished undocumented, Moreno says, his family came to the United States the right way.

McCarthy didn’t respond to a question asking whether, now that Moreno wants to deport refugees who are here legally, he believes only the wealthy and well-connected should be the only ones eligible to immigrate.

Moreno has claimed that immigrants have “destroyed” Ohio cities. Such rhetoric, along with claims of an immigrant “invasion” and the “great replacement theory” have helped motivate racist massacres over the past six years in El Paso, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh.

Lynn Tramonte, director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, urged public figures to think about the consequences their rhetoric might have.

“I don’t know how the people peddling lies about immigrants can live with themselves,” she said. “Most Ohioans are horrified at their behavior and its consequences. We choose love, not hate.”

This story was originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal