Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump waits to speak at a press conference at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, on September 13, 2024. (Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP)
RANCHO PALOS VERDES, United States — Donald Trump said Friday that if elected president again he would initiate “large deportations” from the Ohio city that has seen a recent influx of Haitian migrants, whom he has baselessly accused of eating cats and dogs.
“We will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio,” Trump told reporters in California as he spoke of how “barbaric criminals” including migrant gang members have been wreaking havoc in US communities.
Springfield is at the center of a swirling conspiracy theory spread by Republicans and Trump’s campaign that claims Haitians are eating local residents’ pets.
On Friday, Springfield authorities evacuated schools for a second day amid unspecified threats linked to the growing tension.
The head of the local Haitian community center, Viles Dorsainvil, told AFP that the FBI was investigating threatening phone calls to the organization.
Trump magnified the false story about the pets in extended comments Thursday where he claimed park geese were likewise being killed by Haitians — and told a rally that “young American girls being raped and sodomized and murdered by savage criminal aliens.”
President Joe Biden, who dropped out of his own reelection campaign to endorse Harris instead, intervened Friday to say that Trump “has to stop” inflaming tensions, and that “there’s no place in America for this.”