Busy viewers were likely confused when, halfway through last night’s presidential debate, Donald Trump started ranting about immigrants eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio. The moderator, David Muir, responded with a narrow fact check (“… there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed ….”). Pundits treated the lie as a curiosity. CNN’s Kaitlin Collins ribbed Trump’s running mate and Ohio Senator JD Vance in a post-debate interview, likening his sharing of the false rumors to boosting constituent claims about having seen Bigfoot.¹

But to the Haitian community of Springfield, a small town just outside Dayton, the cat memes are no joke. Trump and Vance are knowingly promoting a false and blatantly xenophobic conspiracy theory in a town that is in the crosshairs of violent hate groups. Last month, uniformed members of the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe marched through Springfield, carrying guns and swastika flags. Charles Haywood, an openly fascist Indiana shampoo manufacturer with ties to one of Vance’s top aides, commented on an X post about the rumors with a Nazi phrase, “Ausländer raus”—foreigners out—”using any and all force necessary.”

And today, in the aftermath of the debate, messages spread on far-right Telegram channels calling for the execution of the parents of an 11-year-old Springfield boy, because they publicly pleaded for their son’s death—caused in a tragic school bus crash involving a Haitian driver last year—not to be used to fuel hate and Trump’s election bid.

I reached out yesterday before the debate to Viles Dorsainvil, head of Springfield’s Haitian Community Help & Support Center, to get a community leader’s perspective. (You can find more background on the right wing’s lies about Springfield in this TikTok post I made.)

This is the transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity:

Hi, Mr. Dorsainvil. How are you?

It has been tough for the past few hours from yesterday to today, but we keep going on.

I had been following what was happening in Springfield for a couple of weeks and it seems that things have really sort of come to a head at the moment. How long have you lived in Springfield?

I've been in the States over for four years now. I was born and raised in Haiti.

What part of Haiti?

In Port-au-Prince.

Where in Port-au-Prince?

I am from Delmas 33.

Oh, Gérald Bataille.²

Well, yes, yes. Close to that. You've been to Haiti.

Yeah, I was the Associated Press bureau chief in Port-au-Prince from 2007 until 2011. I was there during the earthquake. I have a lot of friends on Delmas 33—some of them aren’t there anymore, actually, a couple are in the States now. Anyway, I also write about immigration, U.S. foreign policy, fascism, and the extreme right. All of those things are coming together right now in Springfield, I guess.

I've read a little bit about how the Haitian community in Springfield came to be, but I was just wondering, was there already a Haitian community years ago in Springfield or is the entire community new? How did it come about?

Yeah, I think the Haitian community in Springfield, they came here by spreading word of mouth—that if I am in Springfield and I got a job, I tell another friend and another friend tells another friend. So that way all these Haitians came to Springfield. If you are used to Haiti, news just spreads quickly. A friend would like to have another friend to have this opportunity that they have.

And how many years ago did that begin to happen?

It's over the past four years.

So it's pretty recent.

Yes.

What jobs have people been coming to do?

They most likely work in a warehouse. But now so many professionals and other university professors and other people are living. We are in every sphere of life in Springfield: working in hospitals, working in the Clark County [Department of] Job & Family [Services]. We work everywhere now.

Are these people who have recently arrived from Haiti? Are they people who were already living in other parts of the U.S.?

It's both of them.

Just for my edification, the people who’ve recently come from Haiti, do they tend to come from the north or Port-au-Prince? Jérémie?

The Haitians we have in Springfield, they are coming from all parts of Haiti, the Artibonite Department, Port-au-Prince, the south, everywhere. I meet people here from everywhere in Haiti.

And the people in the community, do they tend to be on work visas? Do they tend to be under TPS [Temporary Protected Status]? Are some of them undocumented? What legal status are most of the people under?

Yeah, so many of them are Green Card holders. They had already been here in the USA. Some of them came here under the Humanitarian Parole program and [other] the people came here, they have been here, and when you are here and the administration is issuing the temporary protected status and they're just normally applying for it.

Do you know, in terms of numbers, how big the Haitian population is in Springfield?

We don't have an official statistic, but the city officials speak of between 15,000 to 20,000.

So you also don't have statistics on what percentage have Green Cards, what percentage are under TPS, anything like that.

This is something that we are still working on, but we do not have an official statistic on that yet.

So tell me about your Center. How did it form? If the Haitian community wasn't there more than four years ago, it must be pretty new.

Yeah, basically we at the Center are helping immigrants with all kind of services that you believe an immigrant can be in need of: applying for legal papers, helping with job search and job application, the housing application and the basic needs—clothes, hygienic kids, or any other thing that we can help of. Also try to implement some projects like cross-cultural education, implementing a Creole course for Americans who like to speak Creole or language classes for the immigrants. We've been providing so many services.

And when did the center open?

We founded it in December last year, but we opened in April this year.

Where does the center get its funding from?

Actually we are just volunteers. This is why so many of us, we still have a first job to keep ourselves going, but we have to step up for the Haitian community because before that they didn't have anywhere else to a place that is run by Haitians where they can go for community service. We had support from Welcome Springfield. Columbia Gas [a local utility] supported us because we had a training session with them. But other than that, we do not normally get any funding yet. We still normally are looking for some resources.

And how did you get involved? Where did you live before Springfield?

Where I was before Springfield? I used to be in Haiti. I came to the USA in 2020. And I arrived in Springfield in January 2021.

You came pretty quickly to Springfield then. How did you hear about it? It's obviously a very small town.

Yeah, I had my nephew here in Springfield before he came here for work opportunity. He told me if I come here I would fight some job quicker and this was why I came here in Springfield.

So what's your other job besides the center?

I work at the Clark County Jobs and Family Services. I just receive people's application for food stamps and Medicaid and cash assistance. I just study their eligibility for those assistance and interview them and approve them for those benefits.

What were things like over the course of the first couple of years that you were living in Springfield? Was the community welcoming?

We were just here working peacefully and caring about our family and all of this. The community was okay. There was still a group of people in Springfield who saw the coming of the Haitians as a threat. But normally, generally, the community was so open with us. We had so many people working with us and things like this. Until the recent incident of the recent bus accident and people have been building up on that just to tell bad news about us.

So you think the bus accident was when things really started to change?

Yeah, it triggered it. There was some tension before but not like it came after the bus accident.

I've read about the bus accident. It sounds like it was a horrific tragedy, a horrific event.

Yes.

Can you just take back me a little bit to when it happened? What happened? What was the reaction like?