Ohio Haitian immigrants say they are afraid to leave home after recent backlash
Republican vice presidential nominee, Sen. J.D. Vance speaks with media at the airport before he departs, Sept. 14, 2024, in Greenville, N.C. (Allison Joyce/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Haitian migrants residing in Springfield, Ohio, shared with ABC News their harrowing experiences of living in constant fear, expressing deep concerns about their safety that prevent them from venturing outside their homes.
In a town of more than 58,000 residents, threats of bombings and shootings led to the closure of city buildings and schools for several days. Wittenberg University canceled all activities on Sunday and classes on Monday as a precautionary measure.
James Fleurijean, a Haitian Community Help & Support Center member, stated that the continual spread of false and divisive statements from prominent politicians was fostering an environment of fear.
“I know some parents like for this period of time they’re trying to keep their children home, like, by the time they see how things gonna be, like, wait for a couple of weeks to see if things that are calm down, or if things gonna escalate,” Fleurijean said. “You see, that’s why, like some parents, they don’t even send their children to school, like, for this week.”
Politicians, including former President Donald Trump, have heightened their fears. At the presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris last week, Trump claimed, “In Springfield, people are resorting to eating dogs, cats, and other household pets.”
Trump did not specify the ethnicity of the migrants he claimed were eating pets in Springfield, but on X, his running mate JD Vance continuously raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services.
“Kamala Harris dropped 20,000 Haitian migrants into a small Ohio town and chaos has ensued,” Vance said on X.
Vance appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press and informed reporters that Ohio locals have been lodging complaints for at least a year now.
“I have heard firsthand from multiple constituents – people who made 911 calls a month ago, a year ago, who were making these complaints,” Vance said. “I trust my constituents more than I do the American media that has shown no interest in what’s happened in Springfield until we started sharing cat memes on the Internet.”
ABC News spoke with a 28-year-old Haitian man who wanted to remain anonymous. He said he had come to Springfield from New Jersey less than a year ago to search for work. While waiting for ABC News, a passerby yelled “TRUMP” at him, he said.
The man mentioned that he used to see a lot of Haitians on the street, but he doesn’t see them anymore. He believes they are afraid. He mentioned that the Haitian community has felt terrorized.
Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine has dismissed the rumors about Haitian immigrants eating pets as nonsense. He says the discussion has to stop and the focus should be on moving forward, not dogs and cats.
“Ohio is on the move, and Springfield has really made a great resurgence with a lot of companies coming in,” DeWine said. “These Haitians came in to work for these companies. They’re very happy to have them there. And, frankly, that’s helped the economy.”
The majority of the 12,000 to 15,000 migrants who have arrived in Springfield over the past four years are from Haiti, according to the city of Springfield. These Haitian migrants left their country due to gang-related violence and poverty, in search of stability, safety, and job opportunities. They came to the U.S. under the Temporary Protected Status designation.
(WASHINGTON) — House Republicans on Monday released the results of a sweeping three-year investigation they say is the most detailed public accounting yet of the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that left behind hundreds of Americans and thousands of allies, some so desperate they clung to U.S. planes as the last military aircraft departed Kabul in 2021.
The report by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul — which relied on interviews with 18 top officials and 20,000 pages of documents — blames the White House, its National Security Council and the State Department for being slow to listen to military generals who warned the security situation would deteriorate quickly once U.S. troops began to depart.
The investigation did not, however, find evidence that Vice President Kamala Harris played any role in the planning or execution of the evacuation, although she expressed public support for President Joe Biden’s decision at the time.
Former President Donald Trump and other Republicans have suggested Harris is culpable, noting past comments by the vice president that she was the “last person in the room” when Biden decided to leave Afghanistan.
“Caused by Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, the humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world,” Trump told National Guard members and their families in Detroit last month on the anniversary of the 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport during the evacuation, which killed 13 U.S. service members and some 170 Afghans.
The Biden administration pushed back on the findings by Republicans, calling it a partisan effort that sought to cherry-pick facts ahead of an election.
The Republican probe also is being released ahead of the first political debate between Harris and Trump, which ABC News is hosting on Tuesday night in Philadelphia. Trump and GOP loyalists are expected to hammer the Democratic administration for failing to prepare for a Taliban takeover once U.S. troops began to depart.
“The chaos and devastation that took place in August of 2021 has forever damaged U.S. credibility in the eyes of our allies, while emboldening our adversaries like China, Russia and Iran,” said McCaul, R-Texas. “Yet, not a single person was fired and, to this day, no one was ever held accountable by President Biden or Vice President Harris.”
Last week, McCaul issued a subpoena for Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s testimony on the withdrawal, threatening to hold him in contempt if he doesn’t testify on Sept. 19. In a written statement, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller noted that Blinken has already testified on Afghanistan and the State Department provided the 20,000 pages of documents the committee was relying on to inform its investigation.
“Though the secretary is currently unavailable to testify on dates proposed by the committee, the State Department has proposed reasonable alternatives to comply with Chairman McCaul’s request for a public hearing,” Miller said. “It is disappointing that instead of continuing to engage with the Department in good faith, the committee instead has issued yet another unnecessary subpoena.”
On the investigation, Miller accused Republicans of politicizing the war and “presenting inaccurate narratives.”
“The State Department remains immensely proud of its workforce who put themselves forward in the waning days of our presence in Afghanistan to evacuate both Americans and the brave Afghans who stood by our sides for more than two decades,” he said.
While many of the details included in the Republican investigation have already become public through media reports and internal government reviews, among the more interesting details come from inside-the-room accounts of U.S. Embassy personnel.
At one point, according to Republicans, staff grew so panicked at the rushed evacuation that they began filling Tupperware containers with passports and visa foils to burn as Taliban forces arrived outside their building. Classified documents were eventually left behind in the scramble, according to the report, although the report doesn’t say how many or what type.
Meanwhile, the NSC was slow to establish criteria for who was eligible for evacuation, a standard the report says changed hourly. At one point, electronic visa letters known as “hall passes” were given to eligible Afghans, but the documents were so easily replicated that bootleg copies began circulating and the U.S. quickly scrapped the plan, according to the report.
The report also paints a picture of a State Department and NSC slow to understand the danger U.S. personnel were in as the Afghanistan government collapsed and the Taliban took control.
Ambassador Ross Wilson, who was brought out of retirement in the Trump administration to serve in Afghanistan and was the top American diplomat in Kabul at the time of the withdrawal, was allegedly reluctant to trigger a military-led evacuation, according to the report. Wilson has spoken publicly before that his staff worked feverishly in those final days to try to process as many travel documents as possible to help qualified people evacuate.
Biden has defended the State Department’s handling of the evacuation in the wake of the operation.
“In the 17 days that we operated in Kabul after the Taliban seized power, we engaged in an around-the-clock effort to provide every American the opportunity to leave. Our State Department was working 24/7 contacting and talking, and in some cases, walking Americans into the airport,” Biden said in 2021 in the wake of the withdrawal.
Biden and other Democrats have also defended the decision to pull out U.S. troops and shutter the embassy after 20 years in the country, saying their options were limited after Trump struck a deal with the Taliban to depart by May 1, 2021.
Trump’s agreement with the Taliban included the departure of U.S. troops and the release of 5,000 Taliban fighters from Afghan prisons so long as the Taliban promised not to collaborate with al-Qaeda or engage in “high-profile” attacks.
Wanting to bring an end to the war and concerned that Taliban fighters might target American service members if the U.S. reneged on the deal, the Biden administration stayed the course but amended the U.S. withdrawal deadline to Aug. 31, 2021.
“He could either ramp up the war against a Taliban that was at its strongest position in 20 years and put even more American troops at risk or finally end our longest war after two decades and $2 trillion spent,” said Sharon Yang, the White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations. “The President refused to send another generation of Americans to fight a war that should have ended long ago.”
Military generals in charge at the time have previously testified that their recommendation to Biden earlier that year was to maintain some 2,500 troops beyond that date regardless of what Trump had agreed to.
“At the end of 20 years, we the military helped build an army, a state, but we could not forge a nation. The enemy occupied Kabul, the overthrow of the government occurred and the military we supported for two decades faded away,” Gen. Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the withdrawal, testified last March.
“That is a strategic failure,” he said.
ABC News’ Emily Chang, Matthew Seyler and Shannon Kingston contributed to this report.
(PHILADELPHIA) — Members of the “Central Park Five” filed a defamation suit against former President Donald Trump on Monday, accusing him of spreading “false, misleading and defamatory” statements about their 1989 case during the Sept. 10 ABC News presidential debate, according to a new court filing.
Attorneys representing the five men — Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise — filed their civil suit against Trump in federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, seeking monetary damages over his statements, which they say have caused them “severe emotional distress and reputational damage.”
The five men, then teenagers, were accused of the violent rape of a female jogger in Central Park in April 1989. The five, who always maintained their innocence, were convicted and served years in prison. A decade after the attack, a different man confessed to the crime, which was confirmed through DNA analysis.
During the debate, Trump was responding to a statement from Vice President Kamala Harris in which she revisited his full-page ad in The New York Times in the wake of the incident that called for the execution of the Central Park Five when he said the following: “[T]hey come up with things like what she just said going back many, many years when a lot of people including Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg agreed with me on the Central Park Five. They admitted — they said, they pled guilty. And I said, well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately. And if they pled guilty — then they pled we’re not guilty.”
The lawsuit points out that Trump’s statements were false in multiple respects — noting none of the members of the Central Park Five ever entered guilty pleas in the case, none of the victims of the Central Park assaults were killed, and the mayor at the time of the assaults was Ed Koch — who did not agree with Trump’s position in the full-page ad.
“Defendant Trump’s conduct at the September 10 debate was extreme and outrageous, and it was intended to cause severe emotional distress to Plaintiffs,” the lawsuit stated.
Trump’s attorneys have not yet entered an appearance on the court docket as of Monday morning.
“This is just another frivolous, Election Interference lawsuit, filed by desperate left-wing activists,” a Trump campaign spokesperson said in response to an inquiry about the lawsuit.
According to the court filing, one of the Central Park Five members, Salaam, was actually present at the debate and sought to confront Trump over his statements in the spin room afterward.
Salaam says he repeatedly shouted questions to Trump, saying, “Will you apologize to the Exonerated Five?” and, “Sir, what do you say to a member of the Central Park Five, sir?”
Trump reportedly responded to him at one point, “Ah, you’re on my side then,” to which Salaam responded, “No, no, no, I’m not on your side.”
“Plaintiff Salaam was attempting to politely dialogue with Defendant Trump about the false and defamatory statements that Defendant Trump had made about Plaintiffs less than an hour earlier, but Defendant Trump refused to engage with him in dialogue,” the lawsuit stated.
The five men’s convictions were vacated in 2002 and Wise, who was still in prison at the time, was released early. The group sued New York City in 2003 and after a decadelong standstill, the lawsuit was settled for $41 million. The city did not admit to any misconduct by its police department or prosecutors.
Salaam was elected to the New York City Council last year, representing northern Manhattan, including Harlem, East Harlem, parts of the Upper West Side and Morningside Heights.
An F-16 Fighting Falcon, assigned to the 354th Fighter Wing, Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, flies over the Joint Pacific-Alaska Range Complex, Alaska, during exercise Red Flag-Alaska 24-1, April 26, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Julia Lebens, FILE)
(WASHINGTON) — A Russian fighter jet crossed the path of an American F-16 last week coming within 50 feet of the nose of the American jet, said North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which said the Russian pilot’s action “endangered all.”
NORAD released dramatic video on Monday that showed just how close the Russian fighter flew ahead of the American aircraft at a high rate of speed.
The close encounter occurred on Sept. 23 during a flurry of activity by Russian aircraft that over the span of several days had flown through the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) off of Alaska. The Alaska ADIZ is international airspace that stretches 150 miles from the Alaska coastline, but the U.S. requires that any aircraft transiting through it must identify themselves or be intercepted by NORAD aircraft.
On that day, two U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jets were sent to intercept two Russian Tu-95 bombers and the two Su-35 fighter jets that were escorting them.
The video released by NORAD was taken from a camera mounted in the canopy of the F-16 aircraft providing a view of what the pilot was seeing as the fighter flew near one of the Russian bombers.
Suddenly one of the Russian jets entered the field of view at a high rate of speed coming at what NORAD said was within 50 feet of the American plane’s nose rolling to one side as it flew past.
The video then showed the F-16’s nose wobbling from left to right, either as the American fighter pilot flew through the Russian aircraft’s wake or the pilot maintained control of the aircraft after the close encounter.
“The conduct of one Russian Su-35 was unsafe, unprofessional, and endangered all – not what you’d see in a professional air force,” said Gen. Gregory Guillot, NORAD’s top commander, in a comment posted on X.
A NORAD statement about the intercept that day did not provide any indication that NORAD aircraft had intercepted the Russian planes only detailing that it had “detected and tracked four Russian military aircraft operating in the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).”
“The Russian aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace,” said the release. “This Russian activity in the Alaska ADIZ occurs regularly and is not seen as a threat.”
The close encounter capped two weeks of incidents where NORAD said it had detected and tracked the aircraft as they flew through the ADIZ.
