This past week, Republicans have raised a barrage of outlandish and racist claims about Haitian immigrants, including the false suggestion that they are eating people’s house pets.
The baseless attacks came from official party social media accounts, LegislatorsAnd from both members of the GOP’s presidential ticket. Vice President Candidate JD Vance said on Monday That “Haitian illegal immigrants” are “causing chaos”, former President Donald Trump on the other hand emphatically, and falsely asserted “They’re eating the pets of the people who live there and that’s what’s happening in our country,” he said during his Tuesday debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
The comments echo well-worn tropes, and past attempts to tie Haitian immigrants to everything. Spread of disease from increase in crime.
Republicans have honed these messages as they seek to capitalize on voter discontent with current trends and make immigration a flashpoint in the November election. Widespread political instability and gang violence in Haiti have displaced thousands — and so have attacks from the Biden administration. Allowed temporary protection And Humanitarian parole For some new arrivals.
The stereotypes that the GOP holds, however, have been around for a long time
In fact, as experts told Vox, such ugly attacks are the byproduct of centuries of anti-black racism and xenophobic sentiment, which have been repeatedly used to justify restrictive immigration policies that single out the Haitian people. The decision to resurrect them in 2024 is, again, creating a clearly dangerous environment and adding to this legacy.
“It’s part of a very old historical pattern,” Regine Jacksona sociologist and dean of the humanities department at Morehouse College, told Vox. “It’s the idea that they could do something so inhumane, so un-American. That’s the bottom line, these people will never be like us.”
Anti-Haitian racism has deep roots
Attacks on Haitian migrants tap into long-standing US framing of Haiti as a threat.
“Racism and xenophobia against Haitians among white Americans can be traced all the way back to the Haitian Revolution when Haitians . . . [overthrew] slavery system and [established] The World’s First Black Republic,” by Karl Lindskug, author of a book Regarding US Detention of Haitian Immigrants, told Vox. “Since then, Haitians have been seen by many white Americans as a threat to white rule and treated as such.”
In 1804, Haitians successfully overthrew French colonial rule and slavery. Concerned that a Haitian victory would inspire American slaves to stage a similar revolution, the United States did not recognize Haiti’s independence for nearly six decades.
Following the revolution, France used military force to demand financial retribution To lose the colony, forced Haiti to borrow money to meet its demands. The United States and France paid those loans — and used them to maintain control over Haiti’s finances for years. Total, a New York Times investigation It found that French reparations cost the Haitian economy $21 billion and directly contributed to the poverty and financial problems that still plague the country today.
The United States also occupied Haiti by force from 1915 to 1934, more than a century after its successful revolution, under the flimsy rationale that it was to ensure political stability following the assassination of multiple Haitian presidents. in reality, It took over to prevent France or Germany from gaining ground in the region, which was seen as strategically valuable. At this time, the United States is a set up Forced labor systemand sold Haitian land to American corporations.
The takeover also sent an ominous message: Haiti is incapable of managing its own affairs.
“Many scholars have spoken of … the rhetoric that a society uses to justify aggression around civilization,” says Jamela Gauis a sociologist at Bowdoin University. “This idea of Haitians as backward, criminal and dangerous started from then on.” Haiti’s association with the practice of voodoo, something self-help author Marianne Williamson, who ran in the Democratic presidential primaries in 2020 and 2024, invented this week, is another tactic used to portray them as a “mysterious … immigrant other.” Go said.
In the decades that followed, the United States’ treatment of Haitian immigrants shaped and reinforced these ideas. This was evident in the 1970s, when a wave of Haitian immigrants sought asylum in the United States as they sought to escape political persecution. US backed dictator Jean Claude Duvalier. Many of these arrivals were detained and refused asylum, even though they met the qualifications for it.
These practices set a precedent for the detention of asylum seekers, a punitive method that the United States still employs. In 1980 Haitian Refugee Center v. Haitian Refugee Center Civility In the case, the Fifth Circuit ruled that the US government singled out Haitians and practiced blatant racism in its immigration policies. Despite this decision, then-President Jimmy Carter and his successors were able to find loopholes to maintain the system. In later years, when Cuban and Haitian immigrants came to the United States at the same time, Haitians were much more likely to holding back compared to their Cuban counterparts.
Stigmatization of Haitian immigrants continued in the following decades, including efforts to associate Haitians with illnesses such as HIV. In the early 1980s, when HIV/AIDS had no scientific name, The press and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have deemed it a 4H disease — which stands for “Haitians, Homosexuals, Hemophiliacs, and Heroin Users,” as some of the early cases of the illness included Haitian people.
Fear of HIV – and the framing of Haitian migrants as carriers of the disease – was one of the reasons the US detained Haitian asylum seekers at Guantanamo Bay in the 1990s. (Thousands were detained and deported, and some was HIV positive (They were threatened with indefinite detention.) It’s part of a long history of the U.S. government deeming immigrants a health risk by barring them from entering the country — a practice that was adopted again during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Both the Trump and Biden administrations used a federal authority known as Title 42 to turn back immigrants due to public health concerns during and after the pandemic. Haitians were one of the largest groups turned away on the southern border on this basis, Lindsvoeg said.
Other attacks on Haitians have been evident in both administrations, such as when Trump himself referred to Haiti as a “loose” country and when Border Patrol officers were caught riding horses and using their reins to tackle Haitian migrants under Biden.
Such attacks have real consequences
In the city of Springfield, Ohio, the latest GOP invective is already doing real-world damage.
On Tuesday, Trump gave the biggest platform yet to the conspiracy and claims about immigrants since then, which Debunked repeatedlyThere are only spreads.
In light of all this, Haitian immigrants in Springfield — a town that claims pets are being eaten — are keeping their children home from school out of concern for property damage and safety. The Haitian Times reports.
Springfield’s city hall was also evacuated Thursday In response to the bomb threat, And two elementary schools were evacuated on Friday Due to public safety concerns. Mayor of the municipality Said he believed both incidents were linked to claims made about Haitian immigrants.
Springfield, a city of about 60,000 people in the southwestern part of the state, has found itself in the Republican crosshairs due to changes seen since 2020. About 15,000 Haitians moved to Springfield for work There followed a manufacturing boomAnd while population growth has helped revitalize the city, It is also kept Pressure on social services In the form of longer waiting times at medical clinics and more competition for affordable housing, some increase hostility toward newcomers.
That anger only intensified in 2023, after a school bus crash that killed 11-year-old Aiden Clark, because the driver of the car involved was a Haitian immigrant. Republicans and right-wing figures have since blamed Clark’s death on the threat posed by immigrants — Some begged his parents to stop doing them.
This hostility toward Haitian immigrants has led neo-Nazis and Republican lawmakers to spread lies about immigrants eating not only pets but also ducks from local parks. There is no evidence of that, Springfield officials said. One instance of a woman—not an immigrant or of Haitian descent—eating a cat occurred in Canton, Ohio, several miles away.
Tropes about people eating pets are not new, and have long been used to demonize immigrant communities in the United States. including Asian immigrants. Such stereotypes allow Republicans to paint immigrants, including the Haitian people, as “forever foreigners” to ostracize them. The focus on pets, in particular, is designed to diminish the humanity of immigrants, and to suggest that they can harm something people hold dear, Jackson said.
“This kind of language, this kind of delusion, is dangerous because there will be people who will believe it, no matter how ridiculous and stupid, and they can act on that kind of information and act in a way where anyone can. That’s how it is to get hurt. It needs to be stopped,” White House spokesman John Kirby said at a press briefing on Tuesday.
Vance downplayed those concerns when asked about his comments after Tuesday’s presidential debate NBC’s Yamiche Alcindor. “I think what is the bigger problem? Humiliating 20,000 people or Kamala Harris opening the border so my constituents can’t live better? Vance said.
As US history — and the threats Springfield faced this week — make clear, however, these racist ideas can have a direct impact on policies and lead to immediate and dire consequences.
