Earlier this month, during a debate with Vice-President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump announced that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating dogs and cats. Since then, Trump and his Vice-Presidential nominee, J. D. Vance, have continued to circulate racist lies about Haitians in Springfield. White nationalists, in response to the Internet rumors about pet eating that prompted Trump’s comments at the debate, had already been showing up in Springfield; in the past couple of weeks, the city has received numerous bomb threats, and its Haitian residents have been the target of verbal harassment and intimidation. Trump has said that he plans to visit Springfield, even as Ohio’s Republican governor and Springfield’s Republican mayor have publicly contradicted Trump’s and Vance’s false stories and said that the Haitian community should be welcomed.

I recently spoke by phone with a Haitian community leader, Viles Dorsainvil, who runs Springfield’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center, a nonprofit that was founded last year. Dorsainvil, who is thirty-eight years old, was born in Haiti and moved to Springfield in 2021. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below. In it, we discuss what life has been like for Haitians in Springfield during the past several weeks, his own journey to America and to Springfield, and how he tries to make sense of why people have demonized his community.

When you came to Springfield, was that your first time in America? Or have you been here longer than that?

I had been travelling to America since 2013, on a B-1 and B-2 visa. I never intended to stay here. I came here sometimes to take part in conferences or in church activities, but I never had in my mind to stay in America.

Are you a citizen now?

I’m not a citizen. I’m on Temporary Protected Status. [This designation, which allows people from countries facing natural or other disasters to stay in the U.S., was extended until 2026, by the Biden Administration, for hundreds of thousands of Haitians who were already here.]

Can you tell me a little bit about what the last few weeks have been like for you and your community?

Overwhelming, shocking, sad. It creates so much anxiety and fear, all of this. You asked me how the experience has been. I’ve been experiencing the worst of America, in terms of how a leader, through his speech, can denigrate or marginalize or divide a community and create harm to a vulnerable group of people by firing up his base for his own political ends.

That’s what I’ve been experiencing. But, at the same time, I’ve been experiencing the best of America where there is solidarity, where there is love. Last Sunday, in an English class that I had with some Haitian students, some Americans from the community came with candy, with flowers, and some kids came with drawings, with words of love and encouragement. The people were saying, “We love you. We welcome you here. We stand with you.”

What class was this?

A class we hold at the community center—a class for Haitians to learn English. The American kids from the community who came were here with their parents, and they were not afraid to give hugs, to shake hands, and to smile with the Haitian students. The students were so happy.

So, while I’ve been experiencing the worst of America through bad rhetoric, at the same time I see the beauty of it. I see the solidarity. People drove from miles away to come and show us love—and the phone calls, and the support that they have given us. And the cash. Oh, my goodness.

So you’re getting donations?

Yeah. We got a couple of donations to keep our programs going.

But people in your community have been threatened? What can you say about this?

Yes, and this is part of the worst of America. The threats are both verbal and then there are the text messages, and people call us the F-word, and they tell us to get out of here, and so forth and so on. We have still been dealing with that this week, and a number of Haitians have just decided to leave. They believe they are not safe in this community. For example, today we were giving an interview to a reporter, and a guy just drove into the churchyard with—he had this big truck and honked at us so badly while this was going on. I mean, you see those guys are ready for violence. The way he drove in the yard, I was worried he would hit someone. Thanks to God that the church service had ended.

Have incidents like this been common?

Yes, we have had so many Haitians who discover on the window of the car some papers from the K.K.K. or some white-supremacist group, all bad words and telling them that if they’re not leaving it’s going to get ugly. All those things. Everything feels very dangerous. And we have people whose houses got vandalized, and the windows got broken and everything. As I told you, this rhetoric by leaders can create so much chaos in our community.

What was the response when you first arrived in Springfield almost four years ago?

It was a peaceful community where everyone was paying attention to their own business, going to work and things like this. But when the Haitians started to arrive, some of the citizens were concerned. The worst of it was that, in 2020, many Americans were given free social assistance, whether cash assistance or food assistance. It was free for them during COVID-19. But in 2023 and 2024, Americans had to reënroll in programs, and they were no longer free. Now they believe that the government took the money from them to give to the Haitians. This is where the tension started to rise against the Haitians, with people saying that the government gave Haitians cash, which was a false claim. Some people do not understand that at some point in time after COVID, the benefits that they used to receive for free were going to stop. But instead of looking for the truth, they just put it in their minds that those benefits that were taken from them were going to us Haitians. And they started to hate us. People started to say bad things toward us.

And these people are within Springfield?

Yes, that’s some local citizens.

Why did you come to Springfield? What was your specific—

What you have to understand, Isaac, is that so many Haitians came to Springfield not because they wanted to come. They came because of the political unrest in Haiti. If you read international journals or articles, you would know that Haiti is not an easy place with all the kidnappings, all the insecurity, and so forth and so on.

I have some understanding of that. I’m not an expert on Haiti at all, but what I was curious about was why specifically Springfield.

Yeah, so, normally they were coming to Springfield because they were looking for a place to get a job, and at that point in time it seems that Springfield was the place for them.

I gather that business groups within Springfield had wanted more residents because they needed more people to fill jobs there.

I am not sure of that, because, in my experience, I came to Springfield through the word of mouth of my nephew. And I got two of my little brothers here because I told them to come here. I don’t know how much of that is true in terms of employers bringing workers to Springfield, or things like this. What I know is that people came to Springfield through pure word of mouth. That’s what I know. That’s the reality for me, for folks that I know. So I don’t know if what you stated earlier is right, or if there is somebody else that can check the veracity of it for you.

I think it’s true, but it’s interesting to hear your own experience. Something else I have read is that things were going very well between longtime Springfielders and the Haitian community, which is newer, until there was this incident last year in which a boy was killed when a Haitian immigrant crashed into a school bus.

Yeah. I think that it was more peaceful before that. But, also, citizens of the community, American citizens, often felt that the influx was happening a little bit quick, and they started to question it. To me, this was normal, because it was not a question of hateful rhetoric but it was a question of asking whether city officials are prepared to welcome the influx.

There were also some people who believed from the get-go that we shouldn’t be here at all. I try to strike this balance for people to understand. It is good for concerned citizens to ask questions about resources, to make sure there are enough resources available to take care of Haitians and the local people.

I know there’d been some concern that the health system and other social services may have been under some strain after so many Haitians had arrived.

Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say. Let me try to explain it in a clear manner. First, there were concerned citizens asking legitimate questions, with no bad intentions. They just wanted to make sure that local citizens and the new arrivals were doing well. But especially after the accident, some people, who believed we shouldn’t be here in the first place, became very fired up against us by telling us all kinds of F-words and N-words. During that time, a Haitian was punched in the face by a white man and went to the hospital. This was before the past two weeks. Other Haitians had their houses vandalized. They were attacked physically and verbally. I don’t have statistics about how much this sort of thing has happened in the last couple of weeks, but I know people who decided to leave because they fear for their lives and this was too much for them.

Where are they going?

Some of them want to go back to Florida, or go to New York, or to another state where they have a family member.

Are there particular moments that stick out to you, from the last few weeks, in terms of people coming together within your community, or among others in Springfield?

Just all the positivity, the phone calls, people calling people, coming to our office. There were Zoom meetings, people reaching out to learn how to offer support. All those actions, at some point in time, will debunk the kind of rhetoric that has been out there. I’m optimistic that we will navigate that together. The message I have been trying to share is a message of solidarity, that Haitians help Haitians and try to speak in one voice, and we are not backing down. We have to keep our heads high as we move forward, and we know that we are resilient people. We have been through a lot of situations. So if we pull up together, we will be able to get through this.

Do you have children?

I have a four-year-old daughter, but she’s in Haiti.

Does she have some sense that something is going on?

I think she was curious about seeing me on CNN, and by the fact that her mother keeps talking to me over the phone. But her little mind is still trying to figure out what is happening. So, yeah, I share quality time over the phone with her, help her to understand that her daddy loves her and I will be around for her in anything, you know?

When you step back and think about what’s happening, how do you understand it? At some larger level, why do you think this is happening? The U.S. is a privileged and wealthy country. Why do you think people are doing this?

I never believed that I would experience leaders like this seeking the highest offices in America. It kind of shifted my idea about the country a bit. On the other hand, I see the beauty of it as well in other people. But I still ask myself, Why do these people, who are seeking the highest offices in America, not know how powerful words can be, and the damage that it could cause in a specific country or community?

They know it does these things and they don’t care. They want to win votes, or they have legitimate hate in their hearts, or both.

Even though you want to win votes, at the end of the day people are more important than votes. I think that any leader should try to make people vote for them out of good speech, not out of lies or denigrating a minority group.

Has any specific conversation or experience stuck in your mind over these past weeks?

I’ve had a lot of conversations with city officials and with the chief of police. I think that the beauty of this community is the diversity and the willingness of those folks to work together, and the inclusive leadership approach of the mayor and of the local leaders. Talking to them is what helped me to be optimistic about the future of this community.

Thank you so much for talking.

Thank you so much, Isaac, and I am glad that I had a lot of time to speak with you tonight. I hope that you can understand that it’s a very overwhelming time. ♦