Two more schools and two college campuses in Springfield, Ohio have been evacuated amid a surge in anti-immigrant invective driven in part by former president Donald Trump and his allies.
Leaders at Wittenberg University and Clark State College said on Monday that they would hold all classes virtually this week and cancel all on-campus events after receiving threats.
The Springfield City School District (SCSD) also told local broadcaster WHIO that students at Simon Kenton Elementary School and Kenwood Elementary School had been moved to other facilities due to information received from local police.
SCSD officials did not describe the nature of these threats, only saying that these were the fifth and sixth SCSD buildings to receive such threats in the past week.
“Late [on] Saturday Sep 14, the college received an email threat via the admissions link on our website, which raised concerns about a possible shooting,” said Clark State College in a public bulletin. “On Sunday, we received an email of a bomb threat to the Springfield campus.”
Wittenberg likewise said it was facing “ongoing threats” which were currently being assessed by local police and the FBI.
Haitian immigrants in Springfield have been targeted by a storm of racist conspiracy theories over the past few weeks, following months of agitation from far-right groups apparently including the Ku Klux Klan.
Last week, after Trump and his running mate JD Vance embraced false claims that Haitian residents have been eating their neighbors’ dogs and cats, threats of violence temporarily forced the closure of government buildings, a cultural festival, two elementary schools, and a middle school.
Ohio governor Mike DeWine said on Monday that law enforcement agencies had investigated “at least 33 separate bomb threats”, all of which turned out to be fake, and said at least some of them had come from overseas.
“I want to say to the parents in Springfield: these threats have all been hoaxes. None of them have panned out,” said DeWine.
“We have people, unfortunately, overseas who are taking these actions. some of them are coming from one particular country. We think that this is one more opportunity to mess with the United States, and they’re continuing to do that.
“So we cannot let the bad guys win. Our schools must remain open.”
Between 12,000 and 20,000 Haitians are estimated to live in Springfield, according to The New York Times. Many have moved there in the last few years thanks to a successful push by city and business leaders to attract new workers to the once-struggling town, whose population had dwindled from about 80,000 in the early 1970s to under 60,000 in 2015.
That effort, combined with word of mouth within the Haitian community, has made the city a magnet for people and families granted a temporary right to remain and work in the US due to worsening gang violence and civil war in the Caribbean republic, which was founded in 1804 after a successful slave revolt.
The influx has reportedly revived Springfield’s economy but increased the strain on local schools, health services, and housing, causing intense debate that was only exacerbated when a Haitian man driving without a valid licence crashed into a school bus in August 2023.
Last week, Trump spuriously declared during his nationally televized debate with Kamala Harris that Haitians in Springfield were “eating the dogs… they’re eating the cats”. Ohio senator JD Vance defended his words, as did many Republicans.
Nevertheless, these claims appear to have zero basis in fact. Multiple viral photos, posts, and videos trumpeted as proof of Haitian animal abuse have turned out to be nothing of the sort, and the author of one widely-reported Facebook post has admitted that she “[didn’t] have any proof” for its claims.
Springfield mayor Rob Rue told CNN on Sunday that he and other officials had also received threats. “It would be helpful,” he said, if politicians “understood the weight of their words and how they could harm a community like ours.”