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    Springfield, Ohio, Sues Neo-Nazi Group, Saying It Intimidated Haitians

    In the lawsuit, the city states that people associated with the group made death threats last year against those who expressed support for Haitian residents.The city of Springfield, Ohio, which was singled out by Donald J. Trump and JD Vance during the presidential campaign with false and outrageous claims about Haitian immigrants, has sued a neo-Nazi group that helped draw national attention to the small city in the first place.The suit, filed in federal court on Thursday, was brought by the mayor, Rob Rue, along with several city commissioners and Springfield residents. It says that Blood Tribe, a four-year-old neo-Nazi group, began a campaign of intimidation focused on Haitian immigrants in the city. It culminated last summer in “a torrent of hateful conduct, including acts of harassment, bomb threats and death threats” against locals who spoke in support of the Haitian residents.The plaintiffs cite the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which makes it a crime to deny individuals their civil rights, and accuses Blood Tribe of ethnic intimidation and inciting violence. With the legal support of the Anti-Defamation League, the plaintiffs are seeking punitive damages and compensation for the thousands of dollars spent on extra security as Blood Tribe’s campaign unfolded.The suit does not mention Mr. Trump, who falsely claimed at a presidential debate in September that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were eating dogs and cats, nor Mr. Vance, who urged his “fellow patriots” to “keep the cat memes flowing.” But the suit says that Christopher Pohlhaus, the leader of Blood Tribe, “gleefully took credit for the growing notoriety” of the false claims about Haitians in the city, “bragging on social media that the Blood Tribe had ‘pushed Springfield into the public consciousness.’”The suit did not name a lawyer for Mr. Pohlhaus, who could not be reached for comment.In recent years, between 10,000 and 20,000 Haitians had come to Springfield, a city of about 60,000 in southwestern Ohio, attracted by the substantial labor needs of the warehouses and manufacturing businesses in the area. While “the vast majority” of the Haitians are in the country lawfully and were “welcomed” by the city, the suit says, the arrival of so many newcomers in such a short time brought a range of challenges, putting serious demand on local hospitals, schools and housing.In posts on its social media accounts last July, Blood Tribe called the arrival of large numbers of Haitians an “act of demographic warfare,” that had “caused a significant strain on the good White residents of the city.” The suit charges that Blood Tribe members, who were masked, armed and brandishing swastikas, gathered at a local jazz festival and later outside the mayor’s home. It adds that the group spread the personal information of people who supported the Haitian community, in some cases putting home addresses on websites that drew men looking for drugs or sex.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Says He Would Try Again to Revoke Haitian Immigrants’ Protections

    Donald J. Trump said on Wednesday that, if elected again, he would revoke the legal status of tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants who have been the target of false accusations by the former president and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, over the past month.Mr. Trump’s administration tried to do that during his first term, too, but courts temporarily blocked it, and President Biden’s administration renewed the immigrants’ status after he took office in 2021.The immigrants in question are living and working in the United States legally through the Temporary Protected Status program, which Congress created in 1990 for people from countries experiencing war, natural disasters or other crises. The Department of Homeland Security designates countries for up to 18 months at a time based on the current conditions, and the designation can be renewed indefinitely. Haiti was initially added in 2010, under President Barack Obama, after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated the country. It has since experienced a major hurricane and a cholera epidemic.“Absolutely I’d revoke it, and I’d bring them back to their country,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with NewsNation on Wednesday.He spoke at length about Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio, claiming that the city had been a utopia — “you had a beautiful, safe community, everyone’s in love with everybody, everything was nice, it was like a picture community” — and that the Haitians had destroyed it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    On the Trail, Trump and Vance Sharpen a Nativist, Anti-Immigrant Tone

    From calling for mass deportations to spreading false claims about migrants’ eating pets, former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, are taking a hard line.As former President Donald J. Trump warned supporters on Saturday in Wilmington, N.C., that immigrants were “taking your jobs,” his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, campaigned about 500 miles north in Leesport, Pa., where he told his crowd that immigrants were taking their homes — and their children’s homes.Battling in a tight race, the Trump-Vance team is sharpening the anti-immigrant nativism that fueled the former president’s initial rise to power in 2016, seizing on scare tactics, falsehoods and racial stereotypes. They spread a false claim that Haitian migrants in a small Ohio city were stealing and eating the pets of their neighbors. And they are increasingly failing to draw a distinction between migrants who are in the country legally and those they call “illegal aliens,” whom they blame for a raft of social ills.Mr. Trump likened the influx to an “invasion” at his rally in North Carolina. “We are going to totally stop this invasion,” he said. “This invasion is destroying the fabric of our country.” He also claimed, falsely, “Every job in this country produced over the last two and a half years has gone to illegal aliens — every job.”Mr. Vance, at the rally in Pennsylvania, said migrants deserved some of the blame for rising home prices because they were “people who shouldn’t be here, people who are competing against you and your children to buy the homes that ought to be going to American citizens.” He faulted the policies of Vice President Kamala Harris and the Biden administration.“Our message to Kamala Harris is: Stop giving American homes to foreigners who shouldn’t be in this country,” Mr. Vance said. “Start giving them to American citizens who deserve to be here.”Both Mr. Trump, who has promised to oversee mass deportations if elected, and Mr. Vance are increasingly questioning the status of Haitian migrants who are in the country legally.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Vance Says He Will Keep Calling Haitian Immigrants ‘Illegal Aliens’

    Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, said on Wednesday that he would continue to describe Haitian residents in Springfield, Ohio, as “illegal aliens” even though most of them are in the country legally.The immigrants are mainly in the United States under a program called temporary protected status, which the executive branch can grant to people whose home countries are in crisis. Mr. Vance claimed falsely that this program was illegal.“If Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally, I’m still going to call them an illegal alien,” he said in response to a reporter’s question after a rally in Raleigh, N.C. “An illegal action from Kamala Harris does not make an alien legal.”Congress created the temporary protected status program in 1990 and presidents from both major parties have used it in response to wars, natural disasters and other humanitarian crises in various countries. The program allows people from countries designated by the Department of Homeland Security to live and work legally in the United States for 18 months, a period that the department can renew indefinitely. It does not include a path to permanent residency or citizenship.The Obama administration granted the temporary protected status to Haitians living in the United States illegally after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti in January 2010. Under President Biden, the Department of Homeland Security has granted or renewed temporary protected status to immigrants from a number of countries, including Haiti, Ukraine and Venezuela. Ms. Harris did not make those decisions.Former President Donald J. Trump has long criticized the program. His administration sought to end protections for people from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan, though some of those decisions were challenged in court, and Mr. Biden reversed some.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    From a Long Island Rally, Trump Lobs Exaggerated Attacks at New York City

    On the day that he was originally set to return to his hometown and receive the sentence for his 34 felony convictions, former President Donald J. Trump found himself a few miles east, basking in the raucous adulation of a packed arena on Long Island.Standing in front of thousands at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., Mr. Trump received a local hero’s reception, as he drew an exaggerated depiction of a New York in decline, made false claims and hammered Democrats over crime, inflation and immigration.He continued to falsely maintain that Springfield, Ohio, had been over overrun by illegal immigrants, even though the Haitian community he was referring to has temporary legal status. Then, he announced he would visit both that city and Aurora, Colo., another focal point of his exaggerated claims about migrants.“I’m going to go there in the next two weeks. I’m going to Springfield, and I’m going to Aurora,” Mr. Trump said. “You may never see me again, but that’s OK. Got to do what I got to do.”As he discussed Springfield, members of the crowd began chanting, “Save the cats,” a reference to a debunked claim spread by Mr. Trump that Haitian migrants were abducting and eating pets. (Springfield’s Republican mayor said this week that a visit from Mr. Trump would burden the city’s strained resources.)Mr. Trump’s rally on Long Island was his second campaign event since the apparent assassination attempt against him on Sunday in West Palm Beach, Fla. Though he spoke with typical vigor about the incident, he later appeared jumpy at one point, as someone apparently approached the stage.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Ohio Governor Sending State Police to Springfield After Rash of Bomb Scares

    After Donald J. Trump spread a debunked rumor about the city’s Haitian immigrants, schools have endured dozen of bomb threats.Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio announced on Monday that he was deploying state troopers to the beleaguered city of Springfield to reassure the community that schools are safe despite a wave of bomb threats.The threats began last week after Donald J. Trump mentioned Springfield during the presidential debate, repeating a baseless rumor that Haitian immigrants in the city were abducting and eating household pets.Since then, 33 bomb threats have targeted city schools, most recently on Monday when two elementary schools were evacuated as a result of threats, Governor DeWine said. City Hall and two hospitals have also been targeted.At a news conference, Mr. DeWine said that none of the bomb threats so far had “any validity at all.”But the threats have shaken the city and disrupted school for thousands of students. The deployment of a contingent of 36 troopers, beginning on Tuesday, is intended to allay anxieties and ensure that students can focus on school.“We must take every threat seriously, but children deserve to be in school, and parents deserve to know that their kids are safe,” the governor said. “The added security will help ease some of the fears caused by these hoaxes.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    JD Vance Stands By False Pet-Eating Claims Roiling Ohio City

    Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, doubled down Sunday on the false claims that he and former President Donald J. Trump have spread suggesting Haitian migrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, which has received numerous bomb threats in the days since the claims surfaced.Mr. Vance said on CNN that the claims, which have been debunked by city officials in Springfield, had come from “firsthand accounts from my constituents,” and attacked the interviewer, Dana Bash, for fact-checking him, calling her a “Democratic propagandist” for connecting his and Mr. Trump’s words to the bomb threats.“I’ve been trying to talk about the problems in Springfield for months,” he said in the interview. He went on: “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”When Ms. Bash noted he had said “creating,” Mr. Vance replied, “I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it.”The false claims about the immigrants in Springfield have exploded since Mr. Vance became the first prominent national figure to promote them last week, repeating them on social media. The Trump campaign quickly amplified them, and Mr. Vance subsequently acknowledged that “it’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”But Mr. Trump repeated the claims to an audience of tens of millions of people during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday.During the interview, Ms. Bash noted that Springfield city officials had asked national figures like Mr. Vance and Mr. Trump to stop demonizing the migrants, who are mostly in the country legally under a temporary authorization program for people whose homelands are in crisis. “All these federal politicians that have negatively spun our city, they need to know they’re hurting our city, and it was their words that did it,” the mayor, Rob Rue, told WSYX, a local news station in Ohio.Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican, said in an interview on ABC News on Sunday morning that the claim that migrants were eating pets was “a piece of garbage that was simply not true.” He said that while there were some “challenges” involved in accommodating thousands of migrants, they had benefited Springfield economically. More

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    What to Know About Springfield, Where Thousands of Haitian Migrants Have Settled

    Businesses needed workers, and Haitians, many already authorized to work, heard living costs were low. But the newcomers have strained resources, and that has fueled tension.Over the last few years, many immigrants from Haiti have settled in Springfield, Ohio, drawn by the low cost of living and plentiful jobs. But the pace and volume of Haitian newcomers have strained local resources and stirred some tensions. And now, ahead of the presidential election, the city has found itself caught up in the fiery debate over immigration.JD Vance, the Republican nominee for vice president, invoked Springfield in July to criticize the Biden administration’s border policies. That month, the city’s mayor and manager went on the cable news program “Fox & Friends” calling for assistance to handle an influx that they blamed on the federal government. Then, during the presidential debate last week, former President Donald J. Trump repeated a debunked claim about Haitians in Springfield abducting and eating household pets.Jamie McGregor, left, the chief executive of McGregor Metal, an automotive parts maker in Springfield, talks with Daniel Campere, a Haitian worker.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesWhat’s behind the rise of Haitians in Springfield?Thousands of new jobs had been created there, thanks to a successful effort by the city’s leadership and Chamber of Commerce to attract new business to Springfield, which sits between Columbus and Dayton. Once a manufacturing hub, Springfield saw its economy shrink after factories closed and jobs migrated overseas. By about 2015, its population had dwindled to under 60,000, from about 80,000 in the late 1960s and early 1970s.Companies that set up shop, however, confronted a dire labor shortage.Haitians in Florida, Haiti and South America heard from friends and family about Springfield and its need for workers. They began arriving to take jobs in warehouses, manufacturing and the service sector, and employers urged the new workers to encourage other Haitians to join them.What started as a trickle swelled to a surge after the Covid-19 pandemic, coinciding with deepening political and economic instability in Haiti after the assassination of the president in 2021.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More