After Trump, Vance ‘create stories’ demonizing migrants, Ohio city feels brunt of bigotry, threats of violence

[Episcopal News Service] The Rev. Michelle Boomgaard can speak three languages. One of them is French. On Sept. 15, after a difficult week for the city of Springfield, Ohio, Boomgaard planned to conclude her Sunday sermon at Christ Episcopal Church with some words in French, addressed to the few French-speaking Haitian migrants worshipping there. She wanted to assure them they are welcomed and supported.

But those Haitians weren’t in church on Sunday, “and honestly I don’t blame them,” Boomgaard told Episcopal News Service by phone on Sept. 16. She suspects they and much of the local Haitian community are hunkering down, avoiding attention, after former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, amplified unfounded stories vilifying those migrants last week.

Up to an estimated 15,000 Haitian migrants, who are in the United States legally under what is known as temporary protected status, have moved to Springfield since 2020, seeking jobs that local leaders were desperate to fill in the city’s ongoing effort to reverse decades of economic decline. In a small city with a population of less than 60,000, that sudden influx of new residents has strained resources and services, though a network of Springfield organizations, including Christ Episcopal Church, has begun coordinating efforts to better welcome these newest neighbors and ease their transition into the local community.

Then on Sept. 10, Trump invoked Springfield’s challenges during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, repeating false claims that Vance had made earlier in the week that some migrants were abducting and eating Springfield’s pets. “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats,” Trump said. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

After leaders from Ohio and Springfield refuted those statements as baseless and news agencies reported there was no evidence to support them, Vance appeared to double down on the falsehoods as part of the Republican presidential ticket’s strategy to keep voters focused on the campaign’s anti-immigration rhetoric.

“The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” Vance told CNN. “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.”

The sudden national attention on Springfield, however, appears to be a cause of the people’s suffering. Since the presidential debate, bomb threats have forced the closure of several schools in the city. Additional threats have disrupted the operation of City Hall and other government agencies. Some individuals who support Haitian migrants have reported being harassed by phone and email. The city’s Wittenberg University moved its classes online Sept. 16 after receiving two threats, “both of which were targeted toward members of the Haitian community,” it said in a campus alert.

Boomgaard knows people who have received death threats, and she noted that a local animal shelter closed because it was fielding a barrage of phone calls from people alleging that the shelter wasn’t doing its job. “It was some poor volunteer who was answering the phone,” Boomgaard said.

She was among more than a dozen local clergy members who attended and spoke at a rally Sept. 13 that promoted a spirit of compassionate welcome toward the Haitians and called for an end to hateful rhetoric.

“There’s no room here for the hatred that’s coming into our city. We will not stand for it,” said Denise Williams, president of the Springfield NAACP chapter, according to Springfield News-Sun coverage of the event. “I am standing with our Haitian community, our Mexican community, I’m standing with the white community. We all need to come together as one.”

The Haitian migrants also have received the vocal support from Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike Dewine, who pushed back against the anti-migrant rumors amplified by Trump and Vance. “These Haitians came in here to work because there were jobs, and they filled a lot of jobs,” DeWine told CBS News after the presidential debate. “And if you talk to employers, they’ve done a very, very good job and they work very, very hard.”

On Sept. 16, Southern Ohio Bishop Kristin White issued a written statement condemning the “hate-filled words and fabricated stories” that have been aimed at Springfield. The city “has been thrust into the national spotlight, prompting a barrage of racist threats against our Haitian neighbors,” White said. “Let me be clear: These stories are fearmongering and admitted lies. … We must stand strong and use the words and stories Jesus taught us. Together, we can confront this hate with love, this fear with compassion, these words of evil with the words of the Good News.”

Christ Episcopal Church, where a typically Sunday service draws about 50 worshippers, has long maintained an active food pantry, serving about 150 families a month. It now serves some Haitian families, though the ministry is not specific to that community. The congregation also has been supportive of city-wide outreach efforts coordinated by the Haitian Coalition, which includes a range of local stakeholders, from government agencies, schools and health care providers to businesses, churches and other nonprofits.

“A lot of really good things have come out of that,” Boomgaard told ENS, such health screenings, driver education, English-as-a-second-language tutoring and more general assistance to help the Haitian migrants navigate their new city.

The surge in migration admittedly has fueled tensions in the community, Boomgaard said, but she described the difficult local debate as mostly civil. The challenges facing Springfield shouldn’t be surprising given the “large and significant population that arrived unexpected that nobody was planning for.”

Springfield may not have planned for it, but the migrants’ arrival was a sign of the city’s success. About a decade ago, city leaders and the local business community launched a strategic plan to attract new employers, touting the city’s workforce development programs, its affordability and its location between Dayton and Columbus.

Within a few years, that strategy had succeeded in drawing manufacturers of auto parts and microchips, food-service business and logistics companies, among others. That meant job growth, and job growth meant a need for more workers. And among those ready to work were a large number of Haitians, many of whom had been displaced from their home country by civil unrest, earthquakes and poverty.

Boomgaard said she met a man from Haiti who had found a job in Springfield, bought a house, has a network of friends in town and “has done the American dream.” Despite a difference of language and culture, these new neighbors are adapting to life in Springfield, she said.

And they have done so legally, Boomgaard underscored. “The overwhelming majority of the Haitians that have arrived in Springfield are here through temporary protected status,” she said. Temporary protected status, or TPS, is a federal program, supported by The Episcopal Church, that allows foreigners from certain countries to remain in the United States if problems in their home country make returning untenable. “What they have now is the same right that all the rest of us enjoy to migrate freely anywhere in the United States.”

Boomgaard is herself a newcomer to Springfield. After responding to a call to the priesthood about 15 years ago while living in the Diocese of Southern Ohio, her first positions as a priest were outside the diocese, but she returned 18 months ago to accept the role of rector at Christ Episcopal Church.

She also is a daughter of immigrants. Her parents moved to the United States from the Netherlands before she was born. English, French and Dutch are the three languages she can speak.

At one of Christ Episcopal Church’s two Sunday services, she makes sure readings are available in French. The Diocese of Haiti is The Episcopal Church’s largest by membership, and some of the migrants in Springfield have attended Boomgaard’s services. Many more Haitians, though, have begun attending services in Creole at one of the half dozen or so Haitian churches that have popped up in Springfield.

Boomgaard is hopeful that the national attention on Springfield will subside. She had a specific request for anyone reacting to news from the city, regardless of their partisan affiliations: Stop spreading social media memes about Springfield’s residents.

“Every time somebody passes it on,” she said, “it throws another log on the fire that we are all desperately wishing would go out.”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.