By Ivonne Malaver
Miami – The Haitian community in the United States, a country with at least one million people, half of them in South Florida, is fed up with comments by former president and Republican candidate Donald Trump about them eating dogs and cats.
Outraged Haitians in Miami’s Little Haiti told EFE that Trump and his vice presidential hopeful, Ohio Senator JD Vance, must stop “these dangerous lies” that only seek to demonize them.
Sitting in front of a colorful house next to a van where she sells clothes, Yolande Fertil, 75, can’t stop shaking her head in disgust at Trump’s words.
“In Springfield, Ohio, the people who have come here are eating the dogs, they are eating the cats, they are eating the pets of the people who live there,” the New York tycoon said during his debate on Tuesday against Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
“It’s bad, bad, bad. We Haitians are angry,” Fertil, who will vote “democratic” on November 5, told EFE.
Watching some cats drinking water inside a local barbershop, one of the workers there touches his head in disbelief and without wanting to talk.
One of the customers, who did not want to give his name, says that Trump “does not respect any country or anyone and is just playing politics.” “He doesn’t want people to vote for Kamala,” he says, explaining that the Republican is inciting racism.
While cleaning the floors of the First Interdenominational Haitian Church, Virginia Francois tells EFE that it is just a matter of respect. “Respect people so that people respect you,” she exclaims.
The demonization of migrants
For Paul Christian Namphy, political director of the Family Action Network Movement (FANM), it is “very serious” that Trump has repeated these lies in a debate “of the highest office in the country, in front of the entire nation.”
“These are insulting, ugly words that demonize our community,” says an activist from one of the largest Haitian organizations in Florida, recalling that this conspiracy against Haitians dates back to days before.
“It is a plan to demonize and criminalize not only the Haitian community, but all immigrant communities, and it is also an attack against people of color in general,” he told EFE.
“When we hear Elon Musk (owner of Network X, who also spread the lie), when we hear JD Vance, for us it is an insult,” he reiterates.
Trump’s lies seem to have had an impact in Springfield, Ohio, where some 10,000 Haitians have settled in recent years and where bomb threats have been made against schools and public offices in the last two days.
Although the two incidents have not been officially linked, Mayor Rob Rue has called for “help, not hate.”
FANM’s political director regrets that Haitian communities suffer racism in states such as Ohio and Indiana, where they have been arriving in recent years apparently due to the need for labor.
“Unfortunately,” he stresses, there is a lot of racism in these states linked, among other things, to the conspiracy theory of the Great Replacement, with the argument that migrants “are going to arrive to become the majority.”
Most Haitian migrants are in South Florida, with other concentrations in New York, Massachusetts, Georgia, Pennsylvania and California.
Trump’s unacceptable and desperate words and a fundamental issue for them, such as deportations, “will definitely impact the vote” of this community, Namphy emphasizes.
“We have to know who is promoting our interests (…) we have to reject hatred, division, racism and lies,” he stressed.
Especially in Georgia, which is a very contested state, the Haitians can push for a victory.
The activist adds that this community has its eyes set on a new designation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for the 300,000 who already have this immigration aid that protects them from deportation and for 200,000 new migrants from Haiti who need it.
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