In the televised presidential debate with Kamala Harris, former United States president Donald Trump claimed that “illegal” Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were “eating people’s dogs and cats”.
Since then, Trump and his running mate JD Vance have continued to repeat this absurd and false assertion, which has been circulating on ultra-right social media sites for some time.
Springfield’s mayor derided the allegation, explaining to the media that Haitian workers living in Springfield are there legally and are major contributors to the city’s economy.
But Trump’s baseless allegations — repeated and amplified on the internet by his base of white racists — have resulted in bomb and other violent threats against Haitians living in Springfield, striking fear within the community.
These threats have spread to other cities and Haitians everywhere are fearful and on guard.
In Trump’s first year in office, 2017, he said that Haitian migrants should not be let into the US because they “all have AIDS”. He told Fox News anchor Sean Hannity four years later: “We have hundreds of thousands of people flowing in from Haiti. Haiti has a tremendous AIDS problem. Many of those people will probably have AIDS, and they’re coming into our country.”
Trump has picked on Haitians because they are Black. In his eyes they are “worse” than the people of colour from Central America who have massed at the southern border seeking asylum. Many choose to illegally cross the border because the official asylum system is slow and many are not let in.
What to do with these people is the main issue confronting both candidates. The Democratic and Republican parties assert that there is a “crisis” at the border, with hundreds of thousands of people from mainly Central America seeking to escape violence, poverty and poor living conditions. Both parties want to cut the number of migrants allowed into the US.
Harris says she will reintroduce a Senate bill known as the “bipartisan immigration bill”, which was introduced early this year, following negotiations between Republicans and Democrats on the final wording.
It proposes an overhaul of the immigration system, amounting to a crackdown on the southern border, and was blocked by the Republicans when Trump came out against it.
The bill establishes a low threshold for the president to shut down the border. Specifically, it can be closed if more than 5000 migrants illegally crossing the border are caught by authorities in a day, or if the president determines that national security concerns require it.
More than 5000 migrants are apprehended at the border on most days.
Harris is also promising that new funds would be used to hire hundreds of additional Border Patrol agents.
A new system would be established for hearing asylum cases, moving them to the Department of Homeland Security. Cases would no longer be heard by immigration judges under the Department of Justice. Instead, officers with the Citizenship and Immigration Services would fast track the review of cases, without attorneys present or a deliberative process.
The bill’s authors believe this change would result in the vast majority of applicants being rejected.
Trump is making vague but concerning promises geared to his white supremacist base, such as that, if elected, on his first day of office he would order the deportion of all migrants without papers. He doesn’t say how this would happen. Would a vast police and military force go door to door, searching homes?
Trump also says he would shut the border down, but proposes no plan for how. Trump and Congress would need to come up with a plan, or face chaos at the border.
Whatever the outcome of the election, the situation looks grim for migrants at the border and those already in the US without documentation.