During an interview with NewsNation on Wednesday, former President Donald Trump said he intends to revoke Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, and send them back to their home country if he comes out victorious in the November election, CNN reported.
As previously reported by Face2Face Africa, Trump stoked tensions during the September 10 presidential debate by re-echoing an unsubstantiated claim regarding Haitian immigrants in Ohio abducting and eating household pets. His running mate, JD Vance, as well as conservatives and the right-wing media, have similarly spread that false claim.
“You have to remove the people, and you have to bring them back to their own country. They are, in my opinion, it’s not legal,” Trump said in Wednesday’s interview. When he was asked if he was going to revoke Temporary Protected Status of the migrants, Trump said, “Absolutely. I’d revoke it, and I’d bring them back to their country.”
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A parole program introduced by the Biden-Harris administration allowed several Haitians who had been screened and had sponsors in the United States to relocate to the country legally. Several of those migrants have been granted Temporary Protected Status, CNN reported.
TPS, per the American Immigration Council, is a “temporary immigration status provided to nationals of certain countries experiencing problems that make it difficult or unsafe for their nationals to be deported there.”
The Biden-Harris administration in June increased the allocation for qualified Haitian migrants, paving the way for some of them to be granted TPS. However, other migrants had already been granted TPS to stay and legally work in the U.S. before Biden assumed power.
During Wednesday’s interview, Trump was asked what his next line of action would be if Haiti declined to allow the migrants to enter the volatile Caribbean nation. “They will,” Trump, who notably has a hard stance on immigration, claimed.
“Well, they’re going to receive them, they’ll receive them. If I bring them back, they’re going to receive them,” he added.
The allegations regarding the abduction and killing of household pets by Haitian immigrants in Springfield have been debunked by city officials.
“In response to recent rumors alleging criminal activity by the immigrant population in our city, we wish to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” the office of the Springfield city manager, Bryan Heck, said in a statement to The Associated Press.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine also touched on the debunked claim, saying that it was “something that came up on the internet, and the internet can be quite crazy sometimes.”
But The Haitian-Times reported that after the allegations were circulated, Haitian families in Springfield have come under attack. Per The Associated Press, the current population of Haitian immigrants in Springfield stands between 15,000 and 20,000. The immigrants, who mostly arrived in the city to work, have been granted Temporary Protected Status to lawfully reside in the United States.
But the city has been left unsettled by the false claims. Besides state and local government buildings, schools in the city were targeted with bomb threats, resulting in those places being evacuated and closed. Security has since been beefed up while cameras have also been installed.
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