During the September 10 presidential debate, Donald Trump promoted a baseless rumor that Haitian migrants living in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing and eating people’s pets. The rumor had gone viral in conservative media in the days preceding the debate, in no small part because Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, had been personally amplifying it. Since the debate, Trump and Vance have continued to promote the falsehood, as well as other racist and xenophobic claims about the migrant community, for political gain. Below is what we know about the pet-eating claims and how Trump and Vance’s lies have unraveled.
Is there any evidence or credible reports of migrants stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio?
No, according to local and state authorities. Per the office of the Springfield city manager: “In response to recent rumors alleging criminal activity by the immigrant population in our city, we wish to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
Springfield police have received no reports of stolen or eaten pets, and no credible media investigations have been able to find any evidence of it, either.
Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, has also debunked the rumors. “Look, there’s a lot of garbage on the internet and, you know, this is a piece of garbage that was simply not true. There’s no evidence of this at all,” he said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.
Erika Lee, the Ohio woman who wrote the initial Facebook post believed to have started the rumor, has spoke to several outlets in recent days, expressing regret for her role in the situation. Lee told the New York Times that she heard that a neighbor’s cat might’ve been taken by one of their Haitian neighbors, but later learned that this story wasn’t accurate. She deleted the post, but it has since taken on a life of its own across the internet. “I was not raised with hate,” Lee tearfully told the Times. “My whole family is biracial. I never wanted to cause problems for anyone.”
What about J.D. Vance and Trump’s purported evidence?
Vance continues to be a leading proponent of numerous incendiary claims about the Haitian migrant community in Springfield. He has promoted the pet-eating rumors, even as they were debunked by state and local officials and media organizations, and over the past week he has added his own fuel to the fire — citing purported firsthand reports his office has received from constituents that support the allegations. When pressed to put forward actual evidence, however, he has not. And during an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday morning, he seemed to admit that he and Trump were creating stories for media attention:
In the same interview, he repeatedly cited reports from constituents as proof and specifically said some of those reports were verifiable — but offered no evidence to back that up:
After the interview, Vance said in an X post that it was a “dishonest smear” to say he admitted creating the stories. “I didn’t invent constituents complaining about this,” he wrote. “We did help create the media focus on their complaints.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that a Vance staffer reached out to the Springfield local government to determine if the rumors were true, and was told they weren’t — only for Vance to continue sharing debunked information after the fact:
City Manager Bryan Heck fielded an unusual question at City Hall on the morning of Sept. 9, from a staff member of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance. The staffer called to ask if there was any truth to bizarre rumors about Haitian immigrants and pets in Springfield.
“He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” recalled Heck. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”
By then, Vance had already posted about the rumors to his 1.9 million followers on X. Yet he kept the post up, and repeated an even more insistent version of the claim the next morning.
The Journal also fact-checked a story from the Vance’s team about a woman who claimed her cat was taken by Haitian neighbors. The woman, Anna Kilgore, spoke to the Journal and said the missing cat was later found in her basement. She said she has since apologized to her neighbors “with the help of her daughter and a mobile-phone translation app,” per the Journal.
Trump, during the September 10 presidential debate, was pressed to provide evidence for the pet-eating rumors in Springfield. He responded that he had seen “people on television” making the claims, but it’s not clear whom he was talking about. No purported victims or firsthand witnesses of such incidents have come forward publicly.
How did the pet-eating rumor originally get started?
According to an investigation by NewsGuard Reality Check, the rumor appears to have started in early September with a now-deleted post in a private Facebook group called “Springfield Ohio Crime and Information,” where a resident posted a “warning to all about our beloved pets & those around us,” in which she said:
My neighbor informed me that her daughters friend had lost her cat. … One day she came home from work, as soon as she stepped out of her car, looked towards a neighbors house, where Haitians live, & saw her cat hanging from a branch, like you’d do a deer for butchering, & they were carving it up to eat. I’ve been told they are doing this to dogs …
NewsGuard contacted the author of the post, Erika Lee, and the neighbor whom she heard the story from, Kimberly Newton:
“I’m not sure I’m the most credible source because I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat,” Newton said about the rumor she had passed on to her neighbor[.] Newton explained to NewsGuard that the cat owner was “an acquaintance of a friend” and that she heard about the supposed incident from that friend, who, in turn, learned about it from “a source that she had.” Newton added: “I don’t have any proof.” …
Lee, who described herself to NewsGuard as a Democrat who supports Donald Trump, told us that she was “shocked” to see Trump repeat the claim that she had made in a private Facebook group. “Honestly, it blew me away,” Lee said. “I didn’t think that any of this would explode to the presidency.” … As for how the story has shed a negative light on the thousands of Haitian migrants who have settled in Springfield, Lee said she was “just trying to inform people, you know, again, not saying Haitians as a whole [are] bad.”
A screenshot of Lee’s post with her name redacted was shared on X on September 5, and the story quickly went viral among conservatives until it was eventually promoted by J.D. Vance and Donald Trump.
“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Lee told NBC News, emphasizing her regret and fears since posting the message:
“I’m not a racist,” she said through heavy emotion, adding that her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that, and that was not my intent.” … Lee said she pulled her daughter out of school and is now worried about her safety with so much attention on her family. She is also concerned for the safety of the Haitian community, which she said she did not intend to villainize en masse. “I feel for the Haitian community,” she said. “If I was in the Haitians’ position, I’d be terrified, too, worried that somebody’s going to come after me because they think I’m hurting something that they love and that, again, that’s not what I was trying to do.”
What about claims that migrants in Springfield have taken geese or other animals?
Since March, there have been a couple of reports made to local authorities alleging that people of Haitian descent had taken wild birds from Springfield parks. Authorities could not confirm the allegations. Reports the Dayton Daily News:
A caller said she was driving in Snyder Park around noon March 27 and saw three men — described as “Haitian males” — place a live Canada goose and a live duck in a black trash bag and drive away.
“The officer monitored the area and did not find any evidence of a crime,” according to [Ohio Department of Natural Resources]. On Aug. 26, the Clark County Sheriff’s Office relayed a report of two men and two women believed to be Haitian each carrying a goose. “The officer was initially unable to reach the witness but later made contact. No supporting evidence to verify the claim was found,” according to ODNR.
Clark County officials said [last] week they scoured 11 months of call records and found the Aug. 26 call was the only one of this type to their dispatch center. “No videos have surfaced, no pictures have surfaced, no dead geese have surfaced; there’s nothing to substantiate that it’s happening,” Clark County Commissioner Sasha Rittenhouse said Wednesday. At an Aug. 27 Springfield City Commission meeting, a man told commissioners that Haitians were taking ducks out of the park, but did not offer any evidence.
A widely circulated photo of a man carrying what appears to be a goose down a city street has been traced to Columbus, at the intersection of Cleveland Avenue and Northwold Road.
The Associated Press also notes that at the August 27 city commission meeting, “another resident said immigrants had swiped farm animals and picked up roadkill” but didn’t say where or when.
Again, none of these allegations have been substantiated.
NPR reports that some of the animal-eating claims regarding migrants in Springfield are also linked to neo-Nazis:
The now-refuted claim appears to have gotten its start online in early August, when a user on the far-right social platform Gab with the screen name “bri ory” commented on photos of members of the white supremacist neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe marching through Springfield protesting Haitian migrants and carrying swastika flags. The commenter claimed that “once haitians swarm into a town animals start to disappear.”
This post has been updated.
