Pet-Eating Lies to Deportation Fears: Haitians in Trump’s Crosshairs

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

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4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

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Summary

Lindsay Aime remembers the moment his Haitian immigrant community came under a national spotlight. It was September 2024 when then-presidential candidate Donald Trump accused Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, of eating people’s pets. To Aime, who is originally from Haiti but has lived in Springfield since 2019, the accusation was not just absurd. It felt like Trump was portraying his entire community as criminal.

Today, the estimated 10,000 Haitian immigrants in Springfield are under a different sort of spotlight. The Trump administration is trying to revoke the legal status that allows hundreds of thousands of Haitians and other immigrants to live in the US. Those moves are being challenged in court, but many are feeling panicked and confused. Aime is the co-founder of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center in Springfield, a resource for immigrants looking for legal advice, especially now. “We don’t have any good news,” he says. “We keep telling all our people who come in our office: Stay safe, stay safe, stay safe. Stay out of trouble.”

On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks with Aime about what it was like when all eyes were on his community during the election, why returning to his home country is not an option, and the challenges of trying to reunite with a son still living in Haiti.

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Listen: Trump’s Deportation Black Hole (Reveal)
Read: Bomb Threat Prompts Evacuation of Springfield, Ohio, City Hall (Mother Jones)
Read: After Jailing of Newark Mayor, DHS Official Warns of “More Arrests Coming” (Mother Jones)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	If they know you from United States, you will be the target.
0:05.5	They will come after you.
0:06.5	They might take you have a lot of money.
0:08.0	You can get kidnapped and people can kill you.
0:10.6	I can go anywhere else, but I'm not going to go down in Haiti, actually, until there's peace.
0:16.0	Today on more to the story, as the Trump administration is ramping up deportations. I sit down with Lindsay
0:22.5	M.A., a Haitian immigrant in Springfield, Ohio. It talks about why moving back to Haiti is not an
0:28.8	option and what it was like for his community to come under a national spotlight during the election.
0:35.0	Stay with us.
0:56.0	This is more to the story. I'm Al-Ledson. In the first few months of his administration, President Trump has targeted and deported thousands of immigrants. Many who are living in the U.S.
1:02.5	legally. Students have been taken off the street by plane-clothes ice officers. Entire families have
1:08.6	been detained. Others have been forced onto planes and sent to prisons in countries thousands of miles away.
1:15.6	At the same time, the administration is attempting to revoke legal protections for hundreds of thousands of other immigrants still in the country.
1:24.6	This includes temporary protected status, also known as TPS. The moves by the White
1:30.1	House are causing panic and confusion in immigrant communities around the country, including in
1:35.7	Springfield, Ohio, which became the setting for a false and racist storyline during the election.
1:41.4	You might remember. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that
1:46.6	came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is
1:55.1	what's happening in our country. And it's a shame. That was Donald Trump at a debate during the
2:00.5	campaign.
2:02.0	Lindsay M.A. is a Haitian immigrant who lives in Springfield.
2:06.0	He co-founded the Haitian Community Help and Support Center,
	...

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