Bomb threats rattle Springfield for 2nd day as Ohio city finds itself at center of latest Trump controversy

Former President Donald Trump continues to push the baseless claim that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been stealing pets and eating them. And the city has been feeling the effects this week.

On Thursday, multiple city, county and school buildings were closed following a bomb threat. Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said the emailed threat mentioned “frustration with the city related to Haitian immigration issues.” The FBI is working with local police to help identify the source of the threat, Springfield Police Chief Allison Elliott told reporters.

On Friday, two elementary schools were evacuated and a middle school was closed in the wake of the threat. It was not immediately clear whether Friday's evacuations and closing were due to a new threat or linked to the previous missive.

At a press conference at his golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., Trump dismissed the notion that his comments have led to the bomb threats to Springfield’s schools.

“No, no, the real threat is what’s happening at our border,” he said.

Springfield mayor frustrated by Trump’s comments

“We are hurting,” Rue told the New York Times on Thursday. “We want to move forward together, and it just makes it more difficult to do that when we have violent actions and threats.”

“It’s frustrating when national politicians, on the national stage, mischaracterize what is actually going on and misrepresent our community,” Rue continued.

He added: “I am sorry this is going on in our [Haitian] community and that they have to endure this type of hate.”

The threats come days after Trump amplified the baseless claim in the ABC debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said Tuesday during the primetime debate, which was watched by an estimated 67.1 million people. “They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”

When moderator David Muir pushed back, saying that there were no credible reports of such claims, Trump refused to concede.

“I’ve seen people on television,” Trump said. “The people on television claimed, ‘My dog was taken and used for food.’”

Speaking at the White House Friday, President Biden called Trump's attacks on the Haitian community in Springfield "simply wrong.” "There's no place for it in America," Biden said. "This has to stop, what he's doing. It has to stop."

Trump doubles down on false claim

Trump doubled down on the Springfield pet-stealing claim at a rally in Tucson, Ariz., on Thursday night. “Residents are reporting that the migrants are walking off with the town’s geese. They’re taking the geese,” Trump told his supporters. “You know where the geese are? In the park, in the lake. And even walking off with their pets. ‘My dog’s been taken. My dog’s been stolen.’”

On Monday, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, Trump’s running mate, shared a post on X citing unnamed reports that people in Springfield “have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”

In recent years, thousands of Haitian immigrants have resettled legally in Springfield after having fled violence and political turmoil in their home country. Amid the influx, some residents of the city — which has a population of about 60,000 and is located 45 miles west of Columbus — have raised concerns about a lack of resources and public safety. But police in Springfield say that there have been no credible reports of pets being stolen or eaten in the city.

During his press conference on Friday, Trump vowed that if reelected he would conduct mass deportations of immigrants in Springfield. "We're going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country," he said. "And we're going to start with Springfield and Aurora, [Colo.]."

Where did the false claim about Springfield immigrants originate?

According to the Washington Post, the rumor that immigrants are hurting animals in Springfield started on Facebook “in which a user claimed that a friend of their neighbor’s daughter had found her lost cat hanging from a branch at a home where a Haitian neighbor lives.”

And according to Politico, the pet-eating claim in Springfield “may have been conflated with the arrest of an Ohio-born woman in Canton who allegedly ate a cat.”

Not that Vance seemed to care one bit where they came from.

“The media didn’t care about the carnage wrought by these policies until we turned it into a meme about cats, and that speaks to the media’s failure to care about what’s going on in these communities,” Vance told CNN after Tuesday’s debate. “If we have to meme about it to get the media to care, we’re going to keep on doing it, because the media could, should, care about what’s going on.”

Father of boy killed in car accident tells Trump and Vance to stop talking about his son

It’s not just the claim about Springfield’s Haitian immigrants being politicized by Vance and the GOP.

In a post on X Tuesday, Vance referred to Aiden Clark — an 11-year-old who was killed last year when his school bus was struck by a minivan driven by a Haitian immigrant — as a “child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here.”

At a Springfield City Commission meeting later that day, Aiden’s father, Nathan Clark, criticized Trump and Vance for exploiting his son’s death.

“My son was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti,” Clark said. “This tragedy is felt all over this community, the state and even the nation, but don’t spin this towards hate.”

“They have spoken my son’s name and used his death for political gain,” Clark continued. “They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims that fluffy pets are being ravaged and eaten by community members.”

He added: “They are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio.”