SPRINGFIELD—Springfield, Ohio’s onslaught of 20,000 Haitian migrants swamping the struggling town of fewer than 60,000 drew the eyes of America after reports surfaced of migrants killing pets and local wildlife. The killing of geese in local parks by migrants has been confirmed, according to police records, and graphic video has surfaced showing migrants barbecuing a cat in nearby Dayton.
But apart from the story’s flashpoints and viral touchstones, what is obscured is the destruction of a community in real-time. Springfield was already struggling: many already receiving government assistance, a tragic theme of addiction to drugs, and its manufacturing economy a shadow of what it once was.
The speed with which the city’s transformation took place has left citizens stunned. To hear Springfieldians tell it, it wasn’t that Haitians began trickling in the moment Biden took office — though the Biden-Harris administration’s DHS funds organizations in the millions to resettle migrants.
It happened to Springfield in a twinkling. A year or two ago the buses started arriving, residents said. And Springfield, already depressed, is a different town. Ohio.news spent the week in Springfield talking with residents about their experiences.
Many who spoke with Ohio.news seemed to see the city’s selection to receive 20,000 migrants from Haiti as a seemingly inexplicable and arbitrary phenomena — why here? Who knows?
The Story
The transformation of the community has brought with it strained infrastructure, a housing shortage, city services at the brink, and now suspicion over who could be benefitting from the crisis. While the ring of NGOs profiting off of migrant resettlement in America is well-documented, other residents saw local landlords as taking advantage of artificial demand in the housing market.
Migrants come with major government money behind them, and many citizens of Springfield, where the median income is around $27,000, are having a hard time finding a place to live. In some cases, rent has gone up astronomically as landlords can earn more by renting to Haitians than locals can afford, Springfield citizens say.
Median rent In Springfield only 18 months ago was $750. As of September 2024, it’s almost $1300, a whopping 57% of the median income.
Hurting Ohio
On a sunny, unusually warm September Wednesday, a young woman, Michelle, pushes a toddler in a stroller down Plum Street in front of a Salvation Army community center. She is tall and slender and wearing a beige dress. The child is eating an Oreo cookie in the stroller and babbling happily in the sunshine.
Michelle stays in a shelter in Springfield. She understands migrants from Haiti have come from a hard place, but said she no longer feels comfortable walking down the street.
“We can't even walk down our own streets without them loitering, eyeing us women, eyeing our children. That that makes me, who came from sexual abuse, very uncomfortable,” she said, fighting back tears.
She worries about her prospects of finding an apartment after leaving the shelter, she told Ohio.news.
“Us Americans personally, we can't get anything since they came over. They're coming over, taking it all over. But at the same time, I understand why, I don't wish any harm on them.”
“A two bedroom is almost $900 now, a young single mom like me, I can't afford $900 and childcare,” she said. “They're taking everything here.”
For Michelle, prospects look difficult. “Us homeless people or single parents, you know, we can't even—the people that have kids and are still together, they even struggle,” Michelle said. “It's like the Haitians can come here and just get it handed to them, and us Americans have to fight for what is rightfully ours,” she said.
The Cultural Gulf
Wednesday night at a roadside tavern in Enon, a few miles southwest of town, a few people are gathered at the bar. A group of cheerful 20-somethings are playing billiards and taking selfies.
A young man tells a woman he is going home to bed due to work in the morning. “We’re working with the Haitians,” he says. Groans and chatter erupt around the bar.
Dawn Bennet, whose son is among the young people gathered at the other side of the tavern, told Ohio.news the cultural differences have been alarming. “Don’t even get me started,” Bennet said.
Bennet said she and her daughter have experienced rude and aggressive behavior at supermarket checkouts and at Walgreens. Bennet was astonished overhearing the amounts of money for prescriptions in the thousands of dollars, covered by the government. Bennet has no ill will toward migrants, but her community has changed, and she spoke with concern for her daughter and a changing city.
Her son comes over from the billiard table and joins her before closing time. Like everyone who spoke with Ohio.news over the week, they have nothing angry or hateful to say, but their experiences and observations show a changed Springfield and unraveling social fabric, backed by major government money.
Road habits
Everyone who spoke with Ohio.news named migrants’ driving habits as a problem — and a big one. “You’ll see at the BMV the little circle they have to drive,” to get a driver’s license, Cathy McClendon said. She told Ohio.news there is little other evaluation, and they’re off.
A fleet of later model crossover SUVs, Ford Escapes and Buick Encores, with dented door panels and crunched fenders can be seen trawling Springfield. Last year, an 11-year-old boy, Aiden Clark, was killed when a Haitian migrant slammed his Honda Odyssey into a Clark County school bus. An elderly woman was killed in December when struck by a migrant as she took her garbage cans to the street on collection day.
Cathy’s mother, Carol McClendon, has lived in Springfield her entire life. She lives east of downtown, and the change has been heartbreaking, but its reasoning murky. How did 20,000 Haitians come to be in Springfield?
“I wish I knew that answer,” she said. McClendon said life growing up in Springfield was tough, but “wonderful.”
“We didn't have all the hatred in this country like what we've got now,” she said. Her husband was a welder throughout his life. “I had a hard-working Hubby, very hard.”
McClendon spoke of Navistar, a shadow of what International Harvester once was to Springfield and the town’s changing livelihood. Her daughter, Cathy, interjects: “You know, Springfield made so many things. The broom factory was there, the lawn mowers, fans. Everything was made here,” Cathy told Ohio.news.
“Now what do we have? Drug addicts are made here, and Asia made successful.”
And then, there’s the cats.
Claims of Haitian migrants killing wildlife, and even flaying cats, both of which made this week’s presidential debate and precipitated a viral torrent of memes and songs, have now been vindicated.
Faith leaders gathered Thursday at Covenant Presbyterian Church to denounce the claims and call on Springfield to rally around the Haitian migrants, but steps from the church, police reports and 911 audio show, residents did see migrants killing geese along Buck Creek. Graphic video from nearby Dayton surfaced vindicating the killing of cats by migrants.
The use of animals in ritual sacrifice in Haiti is well documented. Would a resident of Springfield be crazy to think the practice would continue in Ohio?
Faith leaders gathered at Covenant called for an end to misinformation and called on Ohio to welcome the migrants. That may be cold comfort to citizens of Springfield who will match leaders’ words with their own experiences of hurt and hardship in an already-struggling town.
The incendiary story of the killing of pets and wildlife ignited viral memes, and media worked overtime to debunk the now-vindicated claims. Ohio Senator and vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance told CNN that if internet memes about cats were what it took to put Springfield’s destruction on the map, then so be it.
Corrie Click, another of Carol McClendon’s daughters, works at Navistar. She told Ohio.news the story about cats and geese distracts from the city’s real struggles. “I just worry people will see that and think ‘how stupid they are.’”
And while wildlife and pets killed shows the vast cultural and religious gulf between Haiti and Ohio, residents have lived through the vagaries of a changing economy, the losing ends of trade deals, and an opioid crisis that has never seen meaningful accountability.
The McClendons have already lived through the city’s changes — many times, with the waves of manufacturing job losses to cheaper labor overseas, a tide of meth and opioids that have done Springfield no favors, and now cheaper foreign labor coming to Springfield, subsidized by DHS funds and government welfare.
Every Third and Fourth House
There is a significant share of Haitian migrants on the city’s south end near Interstate 70, but the remarkable thing about the city’s transformation is there is no “Haiti town.”
Migrants are in virtually every neighborhood, sprinkled throughout Springfield. They can be seen on most street corners, around town in the dented crossovers, throwing dice in park picnic shelters on sunny afternoons.
The situation in Springfield, a city of 60,000 people that saw a tide of 20,000 Haitian migrants, really does seem as if every third or fourth house is now occupied by the newcomers.
How the situation develops from here is murky. Some argue Gov. Mike DeWine’s move to deploy state resources and law enforcement further entrenches Springfield’s transformation. Whether Springfield’s migrants, many of whom have UCIS’ Temporary Protected Status, would be subject to deportation, now popular with a majority of voters, including Hispanics, remains to be seen.
Very few of the sadder developments in Springfield’s history, the job losses, the opioids, and now, the migrant crisis, have been met with any sort of accountability.
Whether a day of reckoning will come, Springfield’s time in the public eye is here, and the city is hurting.
Follow Ohio.news for more on Springfield's migrant crisis.
