Luke Ramseth | (TNS) The Detroit News
SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Two weeks had passed since Donald Trump claimed that Haitian immigrants in this city were “eating the pets,” and restaurant owner Ketlie Moise was starting to worry.
One of Springfield’s Haitian restaurants, Rose Goute Creole, has often been packed with supporters since Trump’s false comments on the debate stage Sept. 10. But at Moise’s diner, Kékét Bongou, which brands itself more broadly as Caribbean food, business has slowed.
Many of her usual Haitian customers walked to the restaurant before because they don’t have cars, but now they are hesitant to go out in public. She has safety concerns, too, and often closes hours early.
Ketlie Moise recently started her own Caribbean restaurant, Kékét Bongou, in Springfield, Ohio. (Luke Ramseth/The Detroit News/TNS)
“If it’s going to continue for a long time, we have to leave this place,” said Moise, 48, who hails from Gonaïves, Haiti, and came to Springfield about five years ago. She worked at a local gasket manufacturer, and for Amazon, saving up enough to start the restaurant six months ago.
Springfield, northeast of Dayton, has been at the center of America’s increasingly bizarre, meme-filled immigration discourse ever since Trump, the Republican nominee for president, said dogs and cats were being eaten by immigrants there — and since those claims were repeated by J.D. Vance, the Ohio senator and Trump’s running mate. There have been bomb threats, school closures, canceled festivals and a visit from a group claiming to be the Proud Boys, prompting local officials and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican who is from the area, to call for a stop to the campaign rhetoric.
But it has shown no sign of slowing in an already tumultuous race for the White House. And Trump says he may visit soon — making Springfield the de facto battleground over race and immigration in this year’s presidential campaign and its people bystanders in a controversy they generally did not seek nor want.
The city’s Haitian population has grown rapidly in recent years, and is now estimated at 12,000 to 15,000. Many of the Haitian migrants are legally in the United States under a federal program known as Temporary Protected Status, after fleeing political instability and gang violence at home.
They have helped fill much-needed roles in the region’s resurgent manufacturing and warehousing economy. But their arrival also stressed education, housing, healthcare, and emergency response resources in the city of about 60,000, local leaders have said.
Local tensions boiled over in August 2023 when a school bus crash involving a Haitian driver killed 11-year-old Aiden Clark. Then came the surge of national attention in recent days over the false Haitian pet-eating claims.
“I think we’re going to stay in the spotlight for awhile,” said Rob Baker, a political science professor at Springfield’s Wittenberg University, where students were just settling back into the classroom after bomb threats sent them home last month. “I call it the white-hot laser of hate, really. I think it’s trained on us right now, and there’s an advantage to …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
