How JD Vance And A Virulent Neo-Nazi Group Inflamed Tensions Over Migrants In Springfield

It was one of the most shocking and disturbing lines in the modern history of presidential politics: During his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday night, former President Donald Trump made a wild assertion about a small city in Ohio that has recently seen an influx of migrants.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in — they’re eating the cats,” Trump said. “They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

The claim of migrants killing domestic animals had been thoroughly debunked before it hit Trump’s microphone. One of the debate moderators, David Muir, immediately responded to highlight reporting from his television network indicating Trump’s shocking comments had no basis in reality. But despite the fact checking, Trump’s incendiary statements trended on social media and led some right-wing allies to rush to his defense. 

This fear campaign against Springfield’s Haitian immigrants contains echoes of some of the oldest xenophobic stereotypes. And, in this case, it has led to very real threats against the migrant community. 

The path the inflammatory rumors took from the fever swamps to the debate stage to an on-the-ground, Trump-fueled furor in Springfield is a new spin through a story arc that has become familiar in the MAGA era: The most out-there right-wing extremists — including, in this case, notorious neo-Nazis — and GOP politicians reinforce each others’ narratives, with real-world ramifications for everyday people. 

The trouble first began more than two months ago, when Republicans — including Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) — began zeroing in on the town. Vance began to speak about Springfield in early July, bringing up the immigrants at a Senate Banking Committee hearing featuring Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell. 

There, Vance mentioned Springfield as part of a line of questioning that sought to tie immigration to inflated housing costs across the country. He cited a letter that Springfield’s city manager had sent to him and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) the day before, attributing a housing crisis in the city to an influx of over 15,000 Haitian immigrants. 

Vance broadened the issue in his question, saying, “In my conversations with folks in Springfield, it’s not just housing.” School and hospital services had come under strain as well, he said. 

“There are a whole host of ways in which this immigration problem, I think, is having very real human consequences,” Vance said.

Vance ratcheted up his rhetoric the following day at the National Conservatism conference. On stage at that event, Vance let loose a stream of inflammatory statements, accusing “illegals” of having “overwhelmed” the city. 

Other Republicans, including Bernie Moreno, who is running for Ohio’s other Senate seat, also framed the situation in Springfield as an “an insane demographic change” that was straining resources. But Carl Ruby, an immigrant advocate and senior pastor at Central Christian Church in Springfield, said it was Vance who did the most to drag the town into the spotlight.

“The sad thing is none of this was stirred up until JD Vance started publicizing it,” Ruby told TPM. “It was an internal thing that we were handling and handling well.”

Since Haitians began arriving in Springfield a few years ago, Ruby has made an effort to build ties with the burgeoning community. He ran a nonprofit that provided aid to the immigrants and has worked to advocate for them. According to Ruby, even after the death of a young boy named Aiden Clark last year in a crash for which a Haitian immigrant was found liable, tensions in the city remained manageable. However, the political attacks set off a summer of increasing misery. On Tuesday, the day after the debate, the young boy’s father, Nathan Clark, spoke up at a Springfield city commission meeting where he criticized Republican politicians for using the death of his son as a “political tool” and suggested their remarks had kicked off a torrent of abuse. 

“I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year old white man,” Clark said. “I bet you never thought anyone would ever say something so blunt. But if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone.”

The outpouring of anger that has overwhelmed Clark and his city has included neo-Nazis and other white supremacists. On Aug. 10, about a dozen members of one such group, Blood Tribe, showed up in Springfield for one of their trademark events, which involve masked marches where participants wave swastika flags. At least two of the marchers who descended on Springfield’s downtown carried rifles. 

Blood Tribe, which is led by a former Marine and tattoo artist named Christopher “Hammer” Pohlhaus, has staged similar marches around the country. The small bands of marchers typically arrive via rented trucks. They have targeted LGBTQ events and, on their social media pages, claim to be aiming to hold rallies at all 50 state capitols. Pohlhaus has also been linked to a plan to establish a neo-Nazi compound in Maine that was seemingly aborted after it was exposed by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The neo-Nazi group’s march in Springfield was led by a top associate of Pohlhaus’, Drake Berentz. During the Springfield march, Berentz made remarks where he referenced the child killed in the car crash and suggested the city had been taken over by “degenerate third worlders.” Berentz, who uttered racial slurs and suggested Jews were behind the migrant influx, issued a call to action for people who “are tired of having to share space.”

“No longer do outsiders have to take your resources,” Berentz said. “No longer do you have to suffer the abuse of subhumans.”

Ruby, the pastor and immigrant advocate in Springfield, said the neo-Nazi march took the negative attention on the city to the next level.

“It changed what was a local conversation pretty quickly into a national conversation,” Ruby said.

Blood Tribe and other extremists remained active in the city. On Aug. 27, just over two weeks after the march, Berentz showed up at a Springfield city commission meeting, where he got up to speak using an alias that contained a thinly veiled reference to a racial slur. 

“I was at the head of the anti-Haitian immigration march,” Berentz said, adding, “I’ve come to bring a word of warning. Stop what you’re doing before it’s too late. Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in.”

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue cut Berentz off, said his comments sounded “threatening,” and asked police to escort him from the meeting. But Berentz wasn’t the only one from Blood Tribe who was in attendance. A user on the site formerly known as Twitter who identified themselves as a member of the group subsequently posted videos indicating they were also at the commission meeting. They also posted a series of threatening statements directed at a woman in town who had criticized the neo-Nazi group in a public forum. Those statements, which were later removed by the site, included attempts to pinpoint the woman’s address, members of her family, and details about a pet. 

TPM emailed an address used by Blood Tribe. We received a response from an unnamed spokesperson who confirmed the group has been focused on Springfield for some time, and plans to stay active in the town. 

“Blood Tribe has been closely monitoring what has been happening in Springfield, OH for over a year now, ever since the tragic death of Aiden Clark. We began sitting in on City Commissioners’ Meetings weeks ago, listening to the plight of the citizens of Springfield fall on the deaf ears of the Town Commissioners,” the group spokesperson wrote. 

“We have every intention of continuing to uncover the corruption behind the Haitian invasion there, making sure they are all repatriated, and ensuring those who are responsible are held accountable for their actions against the citizens of Ohio,” the statement continued.

Blood Tribe isn’t the only right-wing extremist group that has been active in Springfield. On Sept. 1, Patriot Front, a white supremacist group that is also known for masked marches, held what it described as a “protest to the mass influx of unassimilable Haitian migrants” in the city. 

Meanwhile, on right-wing social media pages, activists have for weeks spread videos of the stories presented at Springfield’s city commission meetings. Those clips include footage of Berentz, the Blood Tribe leader.

“People are very intimidated,” said Viles Dorsainvil, the head of Springfield’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center, when asked about the impact of the neo-Nazi marches. 

Some Haitian immigrants in Springfield have stopped leaving their homes out of fear, Dorsainvil told TPM. Others, he said, are keeping their children home from school. According to Dorsainvil, in the aftermath of the debate and ensuing wave of new threats, a local community college attended by many immigrants canceled an exam scheduled for Thursday because of the situation. 

Along with extremists, the people who have complained about the migrants at the meetings seem to include a more pedestrian brand of outside agitator. Ruby said that many of the people who have appeared at city commission meetings to decry the migrants aren’t from Springfield, but rather from further afield. 

“They live out in the county,” he explained. 

Indeed, many of the video compilations that have been spread online by conservative influencers featured one woman at the city commission meeting attended by the Blood Tribe leader who said she had seen migrants “stealing animals from farmers” and “making some barbaric stew out of the birds that live in our park.” 

“I feel like we have been invaded by some sort of pest,” she declared.

TPM was able to identify the woman, who did not respond to a request for comment. According to public records, she does not actually live in Springfield and is from a smaller nearby town. Her testimony has drawn millions of views. 

However, the clips from the meetings achieved their biggest impact by reaching one particular set of eyeballs: the former president’s.

When Trump raised the conspiracy theory on Tuesday, Muir explained that ABC News had been in touch with the Springfield city manager. “He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” Muir said. 

But Trump objected, pointing to things he said he had watched.

“I’ve seen people on television,” Trump said, adding, “The people on television say, ‘my dog was taken and used for food.’” 

And so the debate became the culmination of a dark feedback loop between GOP politicians, extremists, and Trump himself. Online, Blood Tribe responded to the debate with a post on Telegram, surfaced by researcher Kate Ross, in which they boasted about their role in the process.

“BT pushed Springfield into the public consciousness,” the post said.

The chaos in Springfield escalated further in the days after the debate; City Hall reported a bomb threat. Two schools and a local branch of the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles also had to be evacuated. In interviews, Haitian immigrants described facing a wave of vandalism and threats after Trump’s remarks trended online and amplified the videos. 

Trump, who spent Thursday posting memes about animals being eaten on his Truth Social platform, clearly has no intention of stopping the cycle. In response to a request for comment on this story, Trump campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested the former president is not dropping the issue.

“The media is trying to distract the American people from the very real problems plaguing the residents of Springfield, Ohio: skyrocketing rent costs, stressed public health and education services, increased vehicular accidents and public safety concerns because a community of 60,000 Ohioans has been overwhelmed by a sudden influx of migrants,” Leavitt said. “President Trump will continue to talk about making America safe again.”