Political pressure adds to strain of rapid migration in Ohio city

Pastor Ken Winter still receives one to two calls a day from reporters and acquaintances across the country, all with the same question: What’s going on in Springfield?

The small Ohio city Winter serves in featured prominently in the Sept. 10 debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump decried the illegal immigration uptick under the Biden administration, specifically pointing to Springfield, where as many as 20,000 Haitian immigrants have recently settled, most following legal pathways. More than 67 million Americans heard him repeat unsubstantiated rumors that the Haitians were eating their neighbors’ pets.

“Everybody wants to be viral until they are,” said Winter, who pastors Heritage Fellowship Church. “And they don’t really realize what that means.” A string of bomb threats followed the city’s rapid rise to fame. Several city, county, and school buildings closed the Thursday after the debate.The following Sunday, local Wittenberg University canceled activities after a shooting threat was made against Haitians.

In the middle of increasingly vitriolic rhetoric, church leaders are striving to bring a Biblical approach to the immigration debate—upholding the dignity of their Haitian neighbors without ignoring the challenges of rapid immigration that have become obscured amid the media frenzy.

On Sept. 16, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced that the bomb threats were hoaxes “coming in from overseas, made by those who want to fuel the current discord surrounding Springfield,” and he deployed state troopers to patrol local schools. Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said mounting security expenses are costing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“It is complete chaos right now,” said Carl Ruby, the senior pastor at Central Christian Church in Springfield. He has been in communication with other pastors since the city was propelled into the national spotlight. “Everyone’s getting media calls,” he said. “So we’re all trying to keep up. We’re all trying to work with one another.”

Community relations in the former manufacturing hub were already strained before Trump’s comments. Over the past four years, between 15,000 to 20,000 Haitians have arrived in the city, whose population hovered at about 60,000, according to the most recent census.

“Twenty thousand people moving into New York City is not a big deal, but 20,000 people moving into a city of 60,000? That’s a 33 percent increase,” noted Jeremy Hudson, senior pastor of Fellowship Church in Springfield. “This has caused a lot of tension in our community.”

City officials said claims that the newcomers are stealing neighbors’ pets are baseless, and one woman who allegedly reported to police that Haitian neighbors had kidnapped and eaten her cat has since found Miss Sassy, the missing feline. Another woman behind a Facebook post raising concerns about a neighbor’s missing cat that was eventually found said she didn’t intend to fuel the hearsay.

Beyond the sensational rumors, the community is grappling with real challenges. Local schools are struggling to keep up with an influx of new students, many of whom don’t know English. Hospitals also feel the strain. At recent city commission meetings, residents protested the sudden increase in new drivers on the road and the rising cost of housing. Last year, tensions flared when an unlicensed Haitian immigrant caused a school bus accident that killed an 11-year-old student. (At a city commission meeting the same day as the presidential debate, the young boy’s father implored politicians to stop using his son’s death as “a political tool.”)

“It has already been a difficult thing for this community to try to manage, and then you throw in [presidential debate] statements on national TV, and it was kind of like throwing gas on the fire,” said Hudson.

In July, city leaders appealed to Congress for federal funding to boost the city’s public safety, education, and housing resources and drew attention to the city’s strained infrastructure on Fox & Friends First. That same month, Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance highlighted the city during a speech at the National Conservatism Conference. “Ask the people there whether they have been enriched by 20,000 newcomers in four years,” he said. “Housing is through the roof.”

But some employers say the newcomers are easing labor shortages and boosting the local economy at a time when Springfield’s population had steadily declined for decades. Though manufacturing jobs in the town have dropped nearly 50 percent since 2000, remaining warehouses and manufacturers such as McGregor Metal have had trouble filling open positions since many locals left the workforce during the pandemic. Their new Haitian employees are filling essential roles.

“This rapid pace is where the concern is—we have not been against immigrants coming into our area, but at the level they [have come] in has caused infrastructure strain, stress, and culture clashes,” Mayor Rob Rue told NewsNation last week.

The Biden administration has granted many Haitian newcomers temporary protected status, which allows migrants of a certain nationality to temporarily reside in the United States due to unsafe conditions in their home country. Following Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake, the U.S. granted temporary protected status to Haitians already in the United States and renewed the designation several times, most recently earlier this year. Then, in June 2024, the Biden administration used the policy to allow 309,000 more Haitians to remain in the country due to rampant gang violence there.

Many Haitians have arrived through the Biden administration’s parole program that allows up to 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, to remain in the country temporarily if a U.S. resident guarantees their financial support. Others entered the United States via the U.S.-Mexico border and are requesting asylum. Federal officials allowed more than 2.4 million immigrants to remain in the United States after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border between January 2021 and January 2024.

Haitian immigrant Vilès Dorsainvil, who directs the Haitian Community Help & Support Center told WORLD in August that most Haitians heard about Springfield by word of mouth: “Normally a friend tells a friend … ‘If you come to Springfield … I think that you will get an opportunity to work.’”

At Heritage Fellowship Church, Pastor Winter prints translations of his sermons into Haitian Creole for the Haitian families that sometimes attend. Church members also interact with the Haitian newcomers through a local pregnancy resource center and soup kitchen. Winter encourages his congregation to view the growing Haitian community as an opportunity to bring the gospel to the nations without having to leave their hometown.

“There are people that are on all sides of the [political] spectrum in my church,” Winter said. “We’re just encouraging our church family to not get derailed by all of the communication and the social media.”

But focusing on “loving whoever comes through our doors,” as Winter said, doesn’t entail turning a blind eye to the serious challenges of the rapid influx and questions about managing cultural differences and the strain on city resources.

Ruby, who pastors Central Christian Church, is asking churches around Springfield to hand out 15,000 cards to their Haitian neighbors. The cards read: “I’m glad you are here. Christ loves you and so do I.” Ruby recalled one Haitian teenager who broke down and sobbed after receiving the token.

The Sunday after the debate, the Associated Press livestreamed Central Christian’s service, and Ruby took the opportunity to examine what the Bible has to say about immigrants and refugees. On Sept. 19, Ruby joined MSNBC, urging Trump to retract his statements while also calling on President Joe Biden to provide the assistance Springfield needs to cope with the inrush of immigrants.

In an email to WORLD, Ruby pointed out that it’s possible for Christians to welcome immigrants while disagreeing about immigration policy: “The Bible is not a policy manual, Godly people who love Jesus can read it and come to different conclusions.”

Matthew Soerens is the vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief. He argued it’s one thing to criticize the Biden administration’s use of parole or temporary protected status and advocate changes to the asylum system, but another thing entirely to blame people for using those processes. “I do think that [kind of rhetoric] has national implications for the Haitian immigrant community in other parts of the country as well,” he said.

At First Haitian Tabernacle of Faith in Greensboro, N.C., Pastor Gethro Dormes said members of his congregation, a group of 80 to 130 Haitians, are concerned by the threats and negative attention on their community.

Many of the people who attend his church arrived in the United States over the last few years through the Biden administration’s parole program. Others have temporary protected status. Dormes fled to the United States to join his wife, a student, after the 2010 earthquake. “The house was destroyed. We didn’t have any job, any hope,” he said. The couple are now U.S. citizens.

Dormes said Christians should be concerned about justice. “I’m not for people who come in the country illegally,” he said. “It’s not fair to people who come in the country legally.” But at the same time, he urged national leaders to focus on solutions and policy reform instead of dividing.

Jeremy Hudson, the pastor at Fellowship Church in Springfield, noted that both sides of the aisle disparage each other. “People from both camps attend our church, and from time to time, Haitian families attend our church,” he said. “So there’s a lot of confusion.”

Hudson encourages unity—reminding the people in his congregation to treat each other as individuals created in the image of God, regardless of their political opinions. “There’s much to be debated on both sides,” he said. “But we cannot do it in a way that does not accurately reflect Jesus Christ.”