Officials in the American city of Springfield, Ohio, announced that they had ordered the evacuation of several schools on Friday, amid false accusations by Donald Trump against Haitian migrants living in the town.
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This small town in Ohio, a state in the northeast of the country, has been at the heart of a heated controversy since Monday, launched by the radical right and fanned by Donald Trump, who falsely claims that Haitian migrants attack dogs and cats to eat them.
Although the local police have categorically denied this false statement, as have many fact-checking media outlets including AFP, the Republican candidate has repeated it several times since Tuesday, when he had already spread it during his televised debate against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
“This has to stop, what he’s doing, it has to stop,” Biden railed Friday from the White House. “There’s no place in America” for such allegations, he added.
Two primary schools were evacuated and a middle school closed, officials said in a statement to several media outlets. The day before, the town hall had been evacuated after a bomb threat.
Federal police are also investigating threats made Thursday evening against a Haitian home in the city, the director of the center, Viles Dorsainvil, told AFP, referring to insults and invectives to “get rid of” the community.
Despite the highly dubious nature of the rumor, Donald Trump and his close associates have so far shown no willingness to back down from their claims.
At a rally Thursday in Arizona, a state bordering Mexico, the 78-year-old billionaire continued to refer to the false and racist claim.
“It was a beautiful community, it’s horrible what happened,” he told the crowd, also mentioning, without proof, the case of migrants attacking “geese” or “raping young American girls.”
Some of his supporters were seen at the campaign rally carrying signs showing Donald Trump protecting two kittens in his arms, images generated by artificial intelligence.
His running mate JD Vance, senator from Ohio, assured X on Friday that the city of Springfield had experienced a “considerable increase in communicable diseases (…) and crime.”
