Hours after Sen. J.D. Vance admitted his claim might not be true that dogs and cats are being eaten by Haitian migrants in Ohio, former President Donald Trump injected the issue straight back into the political bloodstream by reviving it in Tuesday’s debate.
The pet yarn has become the surprising focus of the presidential campaign, with the GOP nominee saying it’s a symptom of the broken border and Vice President Kamala Harris saying it’s a signal of how “extreme” Mr. Trump has become.
The evidence for Mr. Trump’s claims is iffy.
He said he saw reports on TV. Mr. Vance acknowledged they were rumors, but urged people to keep talking about it, saying it’s the only way they’ve been able to get reporters to pay attention to illegal immigration.
“The media didn’t care about the carnage wrought by these policies until we turned it into a meme about cats,” Mr. Vance, the GOP vice presidential nominee, told CNN after the debate. “If we have to meme about it to get the media to care, we’re going to keep on doing it.”
Immigrant rights advocates have been horrified by the focus, saying it plays on “racist” stereotypes that dehumanize migrants.
SEE ALSO: Ohio attorney general backs claims about Haitians eating geese
“White supremacist and anti-democratic movements have always used the claim that so-called Black savages are coming to destroy, especially when political power is up for grabs,” said Erik Crew, an Ohio native and lawyer at the Haitian Bridge Alliance. “This is no different. This time they are saying it is Haitians, and this time it is being used to try to score political points around immigration as well.”
The story appears to have sprung from two incidents that are being conflated.
One involved a woman in Canton, Ohio, who was arrested last month after police said she stomped on a cat’s head and began to eat the feline. That woman is not Haitian, according to The Associated Press.
Canton is a three-hour drive from Springfield, Ohio, which has seen a massive influx of Haitian migrants, with residents reporting seeing some of them hunt for geese on local parkland.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on Wednesday said credible claims back up that allegation.
“There’s a recorded police call from a witness who saw immigrants capturing geese for food in Springfield. Citizens testified to City Council,” Mr. Yost said on social media.
He said those people “would be competent witnesses in court.”
Mr. Vance first gave national attention to the matter this month, sending reporters into a frenzy to try to undercut his claim.
“False,” proclaimed many outlets, while others labeled it “baseless.”
When Mr. Trump mentioned the claim in Tuesday’s debate, ABC’s moderator said the Springfield city manager said no evidence supported the notion.
Mr. Trump was undeterred.
“We will find out,” he said.
Republicans say the broader truth of migrants threatening public safety is tough to dismiss.
Mr. Trump, in the debate, pointed to Aurora, Colorado, where a viral video purportedly showed Venezuelan migrants armed with rifles taking over a housing project.
“I had to leave because I am not bulletproof,” Cindy Romero, who shot the video, said at a town hall meeting last week hosted by Rep. Lauren Boebert, Colorado Republican.
After initial pushback, local authorities acknowledge the rise of Venezuelan gang activity tied to an influx of migrants during the Biden-Harris administration. News reports do question whether the gun-toting migrants Ms. Romero captured on video are a widespread phenomenon.
That has spawned stories from other cities reporting similar unrest.
In El Paso, Texas, the local Fox News station sent a camera inside a now-shuttered hotel where residents said the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua infiltrated, spawning nearly 700 police calls to the address over the past year.
A police officer who investigated reported finding trash-strewn hallways, drug paraphernalia, prostitution and people with tattoos of AK-47s and basketball themes popular among Tren de Aragua members.
That Haitians and Venezuelans are the focus of the migrant debate is striking — and a feature of President Biden’s policies.
Before Mr. Biden took office in 2021, the illegal immigration issue was centered heavily on Mexico and Central Americans.
But under Mr. Biden, Haitians and others from across the globe have streamed to the U.S. in unprecedented numbers.
In December 2020, the last full month under President Trump, Customs and Border Protection recorded just 330 encounters with illegal immigrants from Haiti. By the spring of 2021 that number was in the thousands per month, and in September 2021 it reached nearly 18,000.
In particular, Haitians streamed across the Rio Grande into Del Rio, Texas, that month, creating an unprecedented beachhead on U.S. soil. They came and went freely between Mexico and the U.S., with the Border Patrol trying to gain control of the situation.
At one point Homeland Security deployed agents on horseback to try to defend the banks of the Rio Grande, and they got into confrontations with Haitians who refused orders to turn back.
Photos of one confrontation showed a mounted agent with his horse’s long reins corralling a migrant, and press accounts accused agents of whipping Black men. Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris both compared the Border Patrol to slave masters delivering whippings in the pre-Civil War South.
A lengthy CBP review cleared the agents, saying no migrants were whipped or struck. But it did fault several agents for using abusive language against them.
The number of Haitians dipped after the Rio Grande incident but has since soared. More than 205,000 unauthorized Haitian migrants have entered the U.S. this fiscal year, many of them through a fraud-plagued Biden “parole” program that skips the border and flies them directly to airports inside the U.S.
The Haitians are topped by those from Venezuela, where more than 280,000 unauthorized migrants have been encountered trying to enter the U.S. this year. Venezuelans are part of the same parole program as the Haitians.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.