This story was originally published by News 19.
SPRINGFIELD, OHIO – Minutes after President Donald Trump’s inaugural speech on Monday, when he began talking about immigration, Yvena Jean François searched her desk drawer for a notebook and pen.
“We now have a government that is incapable of dealing with even a simple crisis in its own country… it is failing to protect our wonderful law-abiding American citizens, but it is providing shelter and protection to dangerous criminals, many from prisons and mental institutions, who have illegally entered into our country from all sides around the world,” Trump said, repeating constant claims from the 2024 campaign for which he provided no evidence.
Jean François jotted down a thought in a notebook on her lap, and the words “FUN STUFF” were printed on the colorful cover.
Trump continued: “I will declare a national emergency on our southern border. All illegal entry will cease immediately and we will begin the process of sending millions of criminal aliens back to where they came from.”
Jean François wrote something more.
After Trump finished speaking, Jean François discussed the main takeaways she plans to share in an upcoming episode of the podcast she hosts from her home studio in Springfield, Ohio, a city of about 60,000 that became a household name during the 2024 presidential campaign . in connection with the spread of disinformation and lies about the people of Haiti.
“Illegal people will be the first participants in mass deportations,” she said.
The exact words Trump used were crucial to Jean François, who is also a member of the Haitian community in Springfield. She heard “dangerous criminals”, “illegal entry”, “prisons and mental institutions” and “criminal aliens” – and she began to relax. “The president said that the first people he was going to catch would be criminals who already have deportation papers,” she noted. And that, she said, doesn’t describe her or most of the other Haitians she knows in this southwest Ohio city between Dayton and Columbus.
Like Jean François, Haitian immigrants from Springfield were drawn here by the opportunity to find a well-paying job in a place where there are more jobs than workers who can do them. Many of these migrants have the so-called Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which gives them the right to live and work legally in the United States and protects them from deportation for a specified period of time. They arrived in Springfield as the country emerged from the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, from states like Florida and New York that are home to the largest communities of Haitians in the United States.
Founded in 1990, TPS is a company fleeting condition available to immigrants from countries facing exceptional circumstances, such as environmental disasters, armed conflicts and civil war. TPS was approved for Haitians in 2010 after a major earthquake decimated a immense swath of the country. Biden administration extended it last year until February 2026 in the face of an ongoing gang war that has cut off access to basic necessities such as food and tidy water across much of the island.
Haitians can ask for it too parole on humanitarian groundsanother fleeting legal status available to citizens of certain countries and approved on a case-by-case basis. Some seek asylum, which, once granted, allows them to remain in the United States indefinitely, become lawful indefinite residents, and sometimes citizens. Unlike asylum, neither TPS nor humanitarian parole provides a path to citizenship, so Haitians and other immigrants living in a country with this designation cannot vote.
The 2020 census found Springfield’s population to be 68% white, 18% black and 5% Latino, but by some estimates Haitians now make up as much as a quarter of the city’s population. Many, like Jean François, have come here since the census, drawn by the opportunity. While her twin brother moved to Chicago, she came to Springfield. Photographer and television journalist in Haiti. She found a job at an Amazon warehouse and saved up to open her home studio; will soon move it to a recent, professional space, she said.
Jean François sees himself as an crucial part of the rebirth in this post-industrial, quintessentially American city, where recent arrivals from Haiti have opened up at least 10 recent enterprises — restaurants, grocery stores and food trucks. The creators of “The Simpsons” set the action in the fictional “Springfield” because there are at least 34 states with Springfield, and each of them represents “Anywhere, USA” in some way. In Springfield, Ohio, the population has declined for decades as auto and farm equipment makers closed and jobs evaporated. Between 1999 and 2014, the city’s median income fell 27 percent — more than any other metropolitan area in the country. – according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. In 2012 in the polls – Gallup reported that Springfield was the unhappiest city in the country.
Just over a decade ago, city officials and business leaders launched a campaign to recruit employers from the manufacturing, insurance and health care sectors to breathe recent life into a dynamic economy. They soon started seeing results. Springfield reported that between February 2020 and March 2024 the second highest dynamics of employment growth According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Ohio, it is second only to the much larger Cincinnati. While the rapid influx of Haitians was a boon for employers needing workers, it also brought its own set of problems. Houses for rent became harder to find and more pricey, classrooms became crowded, and wait times for a doctor or an appointment at a motor vehicle office increased.
Then in July, as the 2024 election approached, J.D. Vance, then a Republican senator from Ohio running to be Donald Trump’s running mate, asked Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell during a banking panel hearing: “What role do you see in the illegal immigration in the development of housing construction? costs?” Vance continued, “My conversations with the people of Springfield are not just about housing.” Springfield Mayor Rob Rue and City Manager Bryan Heck, both Republicans, fanned the flames as the explosion occurred appeared on the television show Fox & Friends to discuss the Biden administration’s immigration policies. “This puts communities like Springfield at risk of failing,” Heck said, asking for additional federal support. As he spoke, footage was shown of a confused scene from a place thousands of miles away: the U.S.-Mexico border.
A few days later, Trump he chose Vance to join him on the GOP ticketputting Springfield – and its Haitian community – squarely in the glare of an increasingly contentious presidential race and a nationwide debate over who deserves to stay in the country.
Trump, whose punitive and restrictive stance on immigration has fueled his political rise, spread disinformation from social media accounts that show Haitian migrants eating human animals in Springfield. He repeated these claims during the high-profile presidential debate. Vance did so as well, even though city officials said there was no evidence to support them. Trump has promised to deport Haitian migrants with legal status. During the September press conferencehe said, “They ruined the place.”
Neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups reinforced the lies about eating pets and drove down to Springfield. There were bomb threats. Employers who hired workers from Haiti were harassed. Woman who initially spread the rumor has backed downhorrified by what she had done. Yet the Trump–Vance mandate continued to rely on the Springfield fairy tale to strengthen its position on immigration. “If I have to create stories to get the American media to actually pay attention to the suffering of the American people, that’s what I’ll do,” Vance told CNN.
Republican elected officials at the local and state levels, such as Rue and Heck, tried to quell the chaos. Ohio Governor Mike DeWineborn in Springfield, pleaded, “Everyone should tone down their rhetoric.” Meanwhile, community stood up for Haitian businesses and local law enforcement claimed that Haitians were victims rather than perpetrators of the crime. Formerly informal Haitian Community Alliance consolidated its status as a legal non-profit organization.
Trump won Clark County, where Springfield is the county seat, with more than 64 percent of the vote.
Interviews with local residents and community organizations show that within two months of Trump’s victory, some Haitians left Springfield. They returned to New York or Florida, or moved to larger cities in Ohio, such as nearby Dayton or Columbus, where they may be less apparent, but they miss the community they created in Springfield. Jean François knows some who tested the waters elsewhere but returned.
Jean François sees no reason to leave; she stated that the same Trump administration immigration policies would apply anywhere else in the country because “Florida, New York – you’re still in America.” Her goal is to continue using her podcast to urge other Haitians to stay composed, stay in Springfield and “do the best things for this city.”
“I know Springfield, I love Springfield. Stay, stay here with me,” she told The 19th from her home studio. “As the president said, ‘Make America Great Again.’ Make Springfield great.”
A few hours later, Trump ended the humanitarian parole program initiated by Biden, which allowed more than half a million migrants from four countries to legally stay in the United States for two years. One of the countries was Haiti.
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