A Deeper Look at the Haitian Immigrant Story in Springfield Ohio

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The News Memo

Sep 13, 2024

In this week’s memo:

A Deeper Look at the Haitian Immigrant Story in Springfield Ohio
GetSmart: 🐘 Baby Elephants Have a Trunk Control Problem

Newsbites

Stat of the week: The number of 1 and 2 person households in the U.S. have skyrocketed since 1960, while 6 or more person households have 📉.
Spacewalk: Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis became the first non-professional crew to perform a spacewalk maneuver, stepping outside of the SpaceX aircraft with just their suit exposed to the elements (video). A large part of the mission was to test new space suits designed by SpaceX, which are significantly slimmed down from previous NASA suits. Stepping out of the door, Isaacman said, "Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here Earth sure looks like a perfect world." Previously, only professional astronauts in government-funded missions had performed the task. The crew spent time doing pre-breathing routines to prepare and the aircraft was depressurized to make it more closely linked to outside. Isaacman, 41, is a billionaire entrepreneur that founded and sold a payments company called Shift4. Gillis, 30, is a senior engineer at SpaceX.

Presidential Debate: On Wednesday night, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debated for what might be the last chance to communicate to millions of Americans before the election in 52 days. 67M Americans tuned in, a significant increase from the debate between Trump and Biden earlier this summer with 51M viewers. According to a flash poll from CNN, the majority of voters thought Harris won the debate (63% to 37%). Before the debate, the same group polled was split 50-50 as to who they thought would win the debate. Trump repeatedly stressed immigration as a core issue, arguing other countries are sending their criminals and citizens from mental institutions to the U.S. He also said that in Springfield, Ohio, people are eating dogs and cats (more in the main story below). Harris, on the other hand, argued Trump is a threat to democracy, citing January 6, and that his administration would sign a federal ban on abortion, something Trump denies. (highlights of debate - 9 min)

OpenAI released its next model for ChatGPT, called o1. According to their website, the new model “spends more time thinking before it responds” to prompts and questions. The update, the company says, will allow the AI to “reason through complex tasks and solve harder problems than previous models in science, coding, and math” (video). In online coding competitions, called Codeforces, the o1 model reached the 89th percentile among human students. OpenAI says in the future it will perform at a similar level as PhD students on tasks regarding physics and math.

Iran sent ballistic missiles to Russia: The U.S. and UK have both formally accused Iran of providing Russia with 200 short-range ballistic missiles to use in its war against Ukraine. “Russia has now received shipments of these ballistic missiles and will likely use them within weeks in Ukraine, against Ukrainians,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. The missiles would give Russia the opportunity to make more substantial military gains beyond the front lines. Questions linger as to whether Ukraine will use U.S.-supplied missiles to strike in Russia - something that has not been allowed in the past.

A Deeper Look at the Haitian Immigrant Story in Springfield Ohio

Note: The News Memo watched multiple hours of Springfield City Commission meetings, which are posted on YouTube, for the majority of the content of this story. We encourage you to listen first-hand to the accounts from residents of the city to learn more.

What brought Springfield into the headlines?
Donald Trump made a claim in the presidential debate this week about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating the cats and other pets of the residents of the city. The dubious claims, which had gone viral and were amplified by figures on the internet, including JD Vance, leading up to the debate, stem from a much deeper, more complex story happening in the Ohio town.

What’s going on in Springfield, Ohio?
Since 2020, about 15,000 Haitian immigrants have come to the city of Springfield, Ohio, which is located about an hour west of Columbus. With a population of 60,000 people, the Haitian immigrant population now represents about 25% of Springfield’s total population.

For the most part, Haitian immigrants in Springfield are there legally with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation, which grants temporary work authorization and protection from deportation. As the situation in Haiti has significantly deteriorated over the past few years due to increasingly violent control of the island by gangs, the number of immigrants to the U.S. has further grown.

The influx of immigrants has put significant strain on the resources of Springfield, including housing, healthcare, and schools. Many of the people coming from Haiti speak little English, so there has been a great demand for language classes. These dramatic demographic changes over a short period of time have flamed tensions among Springfield residents.

What are the primary issues in Springfield?

Many residents have voiced complaints that housing in general, and especially affordable housing, has become extremely difficult to find. Some say they have been forced to leave their homes or apartments by landlords because the immigrant community is able to pay more for rent, supplemented by government cash and medical assistance programs.

Numerous residents are also angry about unsafe driving habits within the Haitian community. There have been two well-publicized car crashes involving immigrant drivers that resulted in the deaths of multiple people, including a grandmother that was hit as she was bringing her garbage can to the street, along with a 12-year-old boy that died in a school bus accident.

Springfield locals are mixed in their views on the situation, with many residents openly hostile to the immigrant community, while many others are calling for unity and better integration efforts. Many of those that spoke at the city council meetings are frustrated that the dubious narrative of Haitian immigrants eating cats are being used to further inflame tensions and distract the town from the deeper problems it’s facing.

What about the claims of cats and pets being eaten?
Leading up to the debate, there were primarily two incidents that went viral claiming that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and other animals.

A video surfaced of a woman being apprehended by police for killing and eating a cat. The incident occurred in Canton, Ohio, and the person of interest is not Haitian.

A photo circulated of a man walking and holding a goose in his hand, with people claiming it was from Springfield. The photo was actually taken in Columbus, Ohio. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said the DNR was alerted to the photo and officials are still investigating the incident because it happened outside the hunting season for geese.

There has been one documented call in Springfield to law enforcement, reporting that a small group of immigrants stole four geese from a public area (written police report, audio of the police call). The Clark County office said they referred the incident to the DNR and have not provided any further detail about the incident. The call was made in late August, before the situation in Springfield began to make national headlines.

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said they’ve seen no evidence of Haitian immigrants eating cats or other pets.

Christopher Rufo, an independent journalist, has posted a challenge on X for someone to bring forward verifiable evidence of the claims.

Go deeper
The Springfield City Commission meetings are recorded and posted on YouTube. They include testimonies and questions from dozens of residents of Springfield regarding the immigration situation. Below are some notable clips from the last two meetings. Each clip is about 3 minutes.

Clip #1: Baron, a local resident that works with the city’s homeless, criticized the council for not focusing resources on the town’s native homeless people, some of whom he said are getting displaced due to rising housing costs. “I personally know, and I’ll testify under oath my hand to God, somebody that lost their house, they were there 7 years, the landlord said ‘hey, ‘I need you to move out, find a temporary place. I’m gonna remodel it and then you can come back.’ It was a lie. They moved them out, tripled the rent. Follow the money.”
Clip #2: Anna Miller blames the city managers for the situation. “The influx has come in so fast, and they [Haitian immigrants] haven’t been educated on our ways, on our laws. They need to know these things. That’s causing so much hate and division.”
Clip #3: Anthony Harris, a 28-year-old local who is an internet influencer, calls on the city council members to see what’s actually happening on the streets of the town.
Clip #4: Nathan Clark, the father of Aiden Clark, the 12–year-old boy that was killed in one of the car crashes, spoke to the council.
Clip #5: Mandy Heaton and Chris Heaton, the son and daughter-in-law of the grandmother that was killed in a car crash, spoke to the council.

Refer a friend

GetSmart

🐘 Baby Elephants Have a Trunk Control Problem

For about the first year of their life, elephants don’t know how to control their trunks. The result for this baby elephant is swinging its trunk wildly in circles (video). When you think about it, it’s just a natural part of growing up for all of us.

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