Tracking the Spread of Hateful Anti-Haitian Rhetoric

This election cycle, many communities faced harassment, bigoted rhetoric and policy proposals that would put their rights at risk. Immigrant communities in particular were targeted, and the incoming administration’s promises of mass deportation are compounding the threats to their safety. No case of the targeting of immigrants in the 2024 election is clearer than the outlandish and harmful conspiracy theories about the U.S. Haitian community that were widespread in September. The onslaught followed a viral disinformation campaign perpetuating a thoroughly debunked anti-immigrant trope that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were kidnapping and eating house pets. President-elect Donald Trump repeated these claims during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, igniting a frenzy. First targeting the Haitian community in Springfield, anti-Haitian rhetoric spread to other towns in Pennsylvania and Alabama during the fall campaign season.

Anti-immigrant groups have propagated anti-Haitian rhetoric, a noxious combination of anti-Blackness and xenophobia, for years. The consistent stalemate over comprehensive immigration reform since the 2010s and the pressures of the American presidential election cycle combined this year to create a flashpoint for anti-immigrant mobilization. 

A recent SPLC Action Fund report highlighting the prevalence of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the 2024 election suggests that immigration, and the lives of immigrants, remains a top issue for exploitation during presidential elections. While elections are about defining national values, anti-immigrant hard-liners’ use of “great replacement”-style rhetoric and racist tropes to stoke moral panic over legal Haitian immigrants is the latest attempt to leverage hate to win at the ballot box.

‘They’re Not Like Us’

The conspiracy theory began as an internet campaign falsely claiming Haitian immigrants in Springfield who are legal residents in the United States were stealing and eating pets. This rhetoric was amplified by vice presidential candidate JD Vance and repeated by Donald Trump during the presidential debate in September. Anti-Haitian attitudes have been prevalent in extremist circles for decades, and these and other harmful tropes track with anti-immigrant narratives present in this election cycle, according to the SPLC Action Fund report. 

The anti-Haitian rhetoric had ugly ripple effects in Springfield, including bomb threats and the harassment of Haitian American-owned businesses. It also attracted such hate groups as the Proud Boys, Patriot Front, Blood Tribe and Trinity White Knights to the area. The rhetoric prompted the nonprofit Haitian Bridge Alliance to file a lawsuit against Trump and Vance, citing the threats and havoc this disinformation is said to have incited. 

While Springfield has borne the brunt of the disinformation, a Hatewatch review of news reports and city council meetings shows that anti-Haitian and anti-immigrant talking points are taking root in other states, including Alabama and Pennsylvania. 

In Albertville, Alabama, a group of residents calling themselves Concerned About Albertville stoked outrage at community meetings and online about Haitian immigrants arriving via charter buses to fill worker needs of a local poultry plant. The rhetoric veered from constructive criticism about the exploitation of immigrant workers to ugly and hurtful rhetoric about the immigrants themselves, as reported by AL.com. 

One speaker at a community meeting held at an Albertville church in August said the issue is less about meeting labor needs and more about importing a “new voting population” loyal to President Joe Biden. The claim that Democrats are intentionally importing immigrants to form a new voting bloc is a common idea among racist “great replacement”-style thinking, according to the SPLC Action Fund. 

“They’re not like us,” a speaker in Albertville said. “They’re not here to be Americanized. They don’t care about schools. They’re scary, folks.” 

Rhetoric about Haitian migrants has shown up in other city council meetings across Alabama, including Mobile and Fairhope. Without evidence, residents claimed an influx of Haitian immigrants threatened their cities. 

In Sylacauga, Alabama, state legislators held a forum on Haitian immigration. One resident said of the Haitian Americans she observed at the local Walmart: “We will never know if they are legal, have committed crimes, have raped, murdered, until it may happen to us.” 

Rachel Laforest, chief program officer at Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, wrote about her Jewish and Haitian identity and the experiences that come with it in a piece published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. In it, Laforest wrote about class and cultural solidarity and her parents’ fight to build power for labor and democracy in the U.S. She warned against efforts to blame societal issues on immigrants. 

“The extremist forces behind the Springfield attacks know that they can only succeed with division,” she wrote. “They employ the machinery of antisemitism and racism to distract from the root causes of our collective struggles and turn us against each other.”

Hateful rhetoric is a strategy

While some hate groups marched in the streets of Springfield, others modified existing anti-immigrant tropes to include Haitian Americans. For example, the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Family Research Council’s online outlet, Washington Stand, has increasingly claimed the U.S. is facing a migrant “invasion” since it started publishing in 2022.

In one recent article, the site republished anti-immigrant rhetoric compiled by the website America 2100 for a series about Haitian immigrants living in the town of Charleroi, Pennsylvania. In a video posted on X and republished by Washington Stand, one Charleroi resident said Haitians’ living conditions are “disgusting,” adding, “They live like they still live in a clay building in Port-au-Prince.”

Anti-Haitian rhetoric has been prevalent in extremist circles for decades. Much of it is rooted in “great replacement”-style thinking, suggesting Haitian immigrants are inferior and pose a cultural threat to white Americans and the dominant culture. 

In 2014, white nationalist thought leader Jared Taylor wrote a piece on his American Renaissance site lamenting Republicans’ embrace of Latinx voters at the time, claiming that countries reflecting the ideology of small government are “hell holes” — while places like Denmark, which embraces government services, clash with conservative values. 

Remarking on the difference between Haiti and Denmark, Taylor writes that “[T]oday’s Republicans have neither the brains nor the backbone for the obvious reply: White people build nice places to live, and black people don’t.”

The white nationalist blogsite VDARE, which suspended operations earlier this year, as previously reported by Hatewatch, has published dozens of articles vilifying Haitian people. In a 2008 article on then-President Barack Obama’s policies to admit Haitian immigrants, author “Patrick Cleburne,” a longtime pseudonymous contributor to the site whose name comes from a Confederate general, wrote, “Why, Americans in general might ask, does the country need more of a people who have spectacularly failed to make anything of their own countries, many with extremly [sic] alien habits, who will instantly qualify for Affirmative Action benefits at the expense of the majority? Perhaps because Obama is determined to overthrow that majority.”

Following the deadly Haitian earthquake in 2010, Mark Krikorian, executive director of the anti-immigrant hate group Center for Immigration Studies, wrote in the National Review: “My guess is that Haiti’s so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.”

Pressed on his comments at a congressional hearing in September, Krikorian offered a response that seemed to reaffirm his stance that Haiti would have benefited more under French colonial rule.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric in local elections

Although local governments have no constitutional power to determine U.S. immigration policy, immigration was a frequent topic of local political campaign messaging in 2024. In an analysis of campaign communications between March and April, the SPLC Action Fund found more than half of the communications came from state and local campaigns; one of every five campaign messages featured an anti-immigrant trope.

Federal campaigns and officeholders also promote anti-immigrant narratives, specifically anti-Haitian tropes. For example, U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., is reportedly facing censure after posting inflammatory rhetoric about Haitians on social media.

Referring to a lawsuit filed against Trump and Vance, Higgins wrote on X in September 2024: “These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu [sic], nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters, but damned if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filed charges against our President and VP. All these thugs better get their mind right and their ass out of our country before January 20th.” The Louisiana congressman deleted the post but doubled down on the rhetoric, telling CNN, “It’s all true.” 

Since the election, immigrant rights groups have gathered in solidarity and are planning for the worst possible outcomes. In addition to deportation, immigrants and migrant service providers are concerned about individualized acts of violence and targeted harassment.

Anti-Haitian sentiment spread during the fall campaign season as candidates, including President-elect Donald Trump, claimed that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were kidnapping and eating pets. Pictured, a member of South Florida's Haitian American community holds up a sign during a rally in North Miami in September to condemn the disinformation. (Credit: Photo Illustration by SPLC. Original photo by AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell.)