Racial Targeting: Haitians
2018
2018-01-12 News outlets reported that Trump referred to African countries Haiti and El Salvador as shithole nations, and during an Oval Office meeting stated that Haitian immigrants “all have AIDS”.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/10/politics/donald-trump-shithole-countries-phrase
https://abc7.com/post/haitian-migrants-donald-trump-former-president-immigration/11108741/
2024 September
2024-09-09 Trump reposted a tweet from JD Vance. The Vance post read, “Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?”. Trump piggy-backed off the post by writing, “Border Czar Kamala Harris invited thousands of Haitian Migrants to flood into America and now a small town in Ohio is being torn apart because of what Kamala did”.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/10/jd-vance-false-conspiracy-haitian-immigrants-john-kirby.html
2024-09-09 Ted Cruz posted a meme on social media of two cats hugging each other, captioned “Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don’t eat us”.
https://x.com/tedcruz/status/1833174142591365185
2024-09-10 JD Vance posted on Truth Social “In the last several weeks, my office has received many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who’ve said their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants. It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false”.
2024-09-10 Trump accused Haitian immigrants in Ohio of eating pets during the 2024 debate, and ABC news had to fact-check him.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c77l28myezko
2024-09-11 JD Vance doubled down on his perpetuating the nonsense that migrants were eating pets in Ohio. During a sit-down interview with Kaitlan Collins on CNN, he stated “When you have a lot of people saying ‘My pets are being abducted’ or ‘Geese at the city pond are being abducted and slaughtered right in front of us’, this is crazy stuff. And again, whether those exact rumors turn out to be mostly true, somewhat true, whatever the case may be – Kaitlan, this town has been ravaged by 20,000 migrants coming in. Health care costs are up. Housing costs are up. Communicable diseases like HIV and TB have skyrocketed in this small Ohio town. This is what Kamala Harris’s border policies have done. And I think it’s interesting, Kaitlan, that, that the media didn’t care about the carnage brought by these policies until we turned it into a meme about cats”. [see Thought Project section in the main menu under ‘Fallacies’]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtRPLCso0Sw
2024-09-12 Springfield OH received bomb threats after the Trump administration made baseless claims about Haitian migrants. The Ohio governor had to bring in State Troopers and bomb dogs.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5132366/president-trump-dismisses-question-springfield-bomb-threats
2025 November
2025-11-26 The Trump Administration announced it would be ending deportation protections for more than 350,000 Haitian immigrants who fell under the Temporary Protected Status. A judge temporarily blocked the order February 2, 2026.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yxn7kqww8o
https://www.ncronline.org/news/judge-stops-noem-ending-haitians-protected-status-fear-ice-remains
2026 February
2026-02-09 The headline from the Springfield News-Sun says it all: “Bomb threats, suspicious packages in Springfield prompt evacuations - Bomb threats that said Haitian immigrants should be gone from Springfield were sent to several Clark County offices Monday morning.”