More Than 20,000 Haitian Migrants Wreak Havoc In Ohio Town

Haitian migrants now make up roughly a quarter of what used to be a quiet Ohio community, and they’re terrorizing the residents.

Located just 50 miles west from the state capital of Columbus, Springfield has become a city emblematic of the nation’s immigration crisis after more than 20,000 Haitians flooded the town previously home to nearly 60,000 people in 2020.

Testimonies from Springfield residents at a recent city commission meeting went viral this week as neighbors reported shocking details of immigrant behavior from outright harassment to alleged gruesome executions of local wildlife in public spaces.

“These Haitians are running into trash cans. They’re running into buildings. They’re flipping cars in the middle of the street, and I don’t know how like, y’all can be comfortable with this,” one resident named Anthony Harris complained to city officials last month. “They’re in the park, grabbing up ducks by the neck and cutting their heads off and eating them.”

Harris went on to highlight how the local welfare office is being overrun by the non-citizen new arrivals.

“It’s nothing but immigrants over there,” he said.

Another resident identified as Noel complained at an earlier meeting in August how her neighborhood has become “so unsafe” following the surge of Haitians that she wants “out of this town.”

“I have men that cannot speak English in my front yard screaming at me, throwing mattresses in my front yard, throwing trash in my front yard,” she said. “Look at me, I weigh 95 pounds. I couldn’t defend myself if I had to.”

“I don’t understand what you expect of us as citizens,” she added. “Who’s protecting us if we’re protecting them? Who’s protecting me?”

In May, one Haitian migrant was found guilty of multiple felonies after driving a minivan without a license and hit a local school bus. The crash killed an 11-year-old boy and injured more than 20 other students. The Haitian driver was sentenced to at least nine years in prison for the collision

Springfield’s mayor, meanwhile, told PBS in an interview published Monday the newcomers were stretching taxpayer resources to their limits.

“Springfield is a close community and has a big heart,” Mayor Rob Rue said. “But at the same point, we’ve had this influx that has taxed all these services,” including “the infrastructure of the city, our safety forces, our hospitals, [and] our schools.”

According to PBS, classrooms have seen four times as many students requiring help with English-language services while additional translators at a local health center cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Before he was picked as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, raised the issue of Haitian migrants overwhelming the blue-collar community with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

“In my conversations with folks in Springfield, it’s not just housing,” Vance said. “They’re trying to build 5,000 new housing units, which is a very Herculean task in a town of about 55,000 people, but it’s also hospital services, it’s school services. There are a whole host of ways in which this immigration problem, I think, is having very real human consequences.”

The added stress to the housing market is also a nationwide issue. According to Zillow, the U.S. was short more than 4.5 million units in 2022, while more than 10 million illegal immigrants have entered the country under President Joe Biden. Ohio’s three largest cities, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus, are each ranked within the top 50 major metropolitan areas facing the highest housing deficits.

Ohio Republican Lieutenant Gov. Jon Husted placed blame squarely with the incumbent administration for the crisis in a post on X as constituent testimonies spread across the internet.

“The Biden administration provided Haitian immigrants documentation for temporary legal status (usually 2 years),” Husted wrote on X. “The Biden Administration also recently changed federal immigration policy which has exacerbated the problem by allowing each one of those individuals to bring up to 6 additional family members.”

On Monday, Federalist Senior Editor John Davidson reported, “Many Haitians were let in through a policy that allowed those arrested after crossing the border illegally to be paroled into the country.

“‘Paroled into the country,’” Davidson added, “is just a jargon-y way of saying they were released from federal custody on their own recognizance, free to go wherever they want in the U.S.”

How did they land in Springfield? “The best explanation,” Husted wrote Sunday, “is that temporary employment agencies were connecting Haitians to jobs at local food processing plants.”

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at [email protected]. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.