In the lead-up to Tuesday’s debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Republicans and their fascist supporters have undertaken a concerted, racist campaign targeting Haitian immigrants. The campaign is aimed at dividing the working class and whipping up a pogrom-like atmosphere as part of Trump and the Republicans’ plan to reject the 2024 election results should they lose.
For the last several days X owner Elon Musk, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, former President Trump, his running mate J.D. Vance and others have encouraged and shared racist memes, fake “news” stories, and AI-generated content accusing Haitian immigrants in the Ohio town of Springfield of stealing and eating family pets, specifically cats.
On September 9, Vance tweeted: “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?”
That same day on X, dozens of Republicans and neo-Nazis followed Vance’s lead and tweeted racist bile targeting immigrants. Georgia Representative Mike Collins tweeted, “They’re in the park. Grabbing up ducks. By their neck. And eatin ‘em.”
Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Ohio Republican Jim Jordan tweeted: “When President Trump was in office: 1. The border was secure. 2. Illegal aliens weren’t eating your pets.”
Texas Senator Ted Cruz tweeted a meme featuring two scared cats with the phrase “Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don’t eat us.”
None of the fascist lies promoted by Republicans are true. The Springfield Police Division issued a statement Monday that read in part, “There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
The police statement continued: “Additionally, there have been no verified instances of immigrants engaging in illegal activities such as squatting or littering in front of residents’ homes. Furthermore, no reports have been made regarding members of the immigrant community deliberately disrupting traffic.”
The lies emanating from Republican lips are the same ones the neo-Nazis group Blood Tribe uttered when they marched through the streets of Springfield on August 10. The Nazis were permitted by police to march downtown while carrying swastika flags and semi-automatic rifles.
On August 27, one of the Nazi members of Blood Tribe, Drake Berentz, a former Marine, returned to the Springfield to deliver an anti-immigrant tirade in which he warned that “Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in.”
Less than two weeks later, on September 10, after the Springfield Police Department debunked Vance’s anti-immigrant lies, he tweeted:
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.
Taking up Trump’s theme of “migrant crime,” Vance resurrected anti-immigrant slanders first used against Chinese immigrants in the lead-up to the passage of The Page Act of 1875, which prohibited workers from “China, Japan or any Oriental country” into the United States. Vance accused immigrants of eating family pets, murdering children and spreading disease.
Do you know what’s confirmed? That a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here. That local health services have been overwhelmed. That communicable diseases—like TB and HIV—have been on the rise. That local schools have struggled to keep up with newcomers who don’t know English. That rents have risen so fast that many Springfield families can’t afford to put a roof over their head.
This disgusting lie is doubly foul, given that both parties embrace a policy of “forever COVID” and mass infection that has led to over 1.4 million deaths under the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations.
Springfield is located between Columbus and Dayton. Like many formerly industrial Midwest towns, it has been devastated by de-industrialization. The hollowing out of decent working class jobs and the devastation that followed was overseen by major corporations, both capitalist parties and the nationalist trade union bureaucracies.
Over the last six years, roughly 20,000 Haitian immigrants have immigrated, legally, to Springfield, Ohio, where they are employed in factories and warehouses. There is no question that local capitalists have used the immigration status of the Haitians to drive down labor costs and exploit the workforce.
For over 200 years, Haiti has been subject to imperialist domination, first by the French and then American imperialism, which, in between installing coups and overthrowing democratically elected governments, has used the impoverished working class on the island as a cheap labor force.
This, of course, is of little concern to Republicans, who are using anti-immigrant agitation to divide the working class and justify throwing millions of registered voters off the rolls in order to depress the vote.
During the debate Tuesday night, Trump repeated the same insane fascist lies about immigrants. “In Springfield they are eating the dogs,” he frothed, “the people that came in, they are eating the cats, they are eating the pets of the people that live there and this is what is happening in our country.”
Asked to respond to Trump’s anti-immigrant filth, Harris merely replied, “Talk about extreme. This is I think one of the reasons why in this election I actually have the endorsement of 200 Republicans who have formerly worked with President Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain, including the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney and Congress-member Liz Cheney.”
Harris’s response shows that the Democratic Party has completely abandoned any pretense of defending immigrants. Under conditions of widening global war, including the genocide in Gaza and the US-NATO war against Russia, the Democratic Party will work with Republicans to restrict immigration and build up the border police state apparatus, which will be used against all sections of the working class that resist capitalist exploitation and imperialist war.
Harris touted her credentials as an attorney general and pledged to sign the $20 billion border package previously negotiated by far-right Republicans.
Congress returned to Washington on Tuesday, and House Republicans made clear that Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign would be taken up by the whole party to subvert the election.
In a “Great Replacement Theory” tirade, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, a so-called “moderate” Republican from Minnesota, assailed “House Democrats” for “consistently” putting “illegal immigrants over law-abiding American citizens.
“The American people aren’t fools. They can read between the lines. It’s all part of the Democrat Party’s grand design over the past 3.5 years border Czar Kamala Harris let over 10 million illegal immigrants into our country.”
After declaring “It’s China Week,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson explained that Republicans would not back funding the government through a continuing resolution unless Democrats supported the “SAVE Act,” a voter suppression bill that would require “proof of citizenship” at the polling booth.
“We have two primary responsibilities upon us right now,” Johnson said, “and that is to responsibly fund the government and to do everything within our constitutional authority to ensure that we have a free and fair election. The SAVE Act is a response to what we deem to be one of the immediate threats and that is illegals voting.”
Johnson claimed,
This is happening across the country. Pennsylvania is a very important swing state. Thousands of illegals are on the voter rolls there. Georgia, thousands of illegals on the voters rolls, Ohio, Texas, across the board, across the country.
We are in an era of razor thin election margins, right? … It matters. If you have a few thousand illegals participate in an election in the wrong place you can change the makeup of Congress and you can affect the presidential election. The American people understand this.
He said the American people were demanding Congress “take action” to “make sure that illegals cannot taint the election.”