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Immigration takes center stage in debate, but no major proposals from candidates

When Kamala Harris and Donald Trump faced each other on the debate stage less than two months before Election Day, the two candidates were at odds on issues ranging from the economy to tariffs and Ukraine. But on immigration, their positions were especially different. VOA immigration reporter Aline Barros brings us the story.
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Ohio city reshaped by Haitian immigrants lands in unwelcome spotlight

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Many cities have been reshaped by immigrants in the last few years without attracting much notice. Not Springfield, Ohio.

Its story of economic renewal and related growing pains has been thrust into the national conversation in a presidential election year — and maliciously distorted by false rumors that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets. Donald Trump amplified those lies during Tuesday’s nationally televised debate, exacerbating some residents’ fears about growing divisiveness in the predominantly white, blue-collar city of about 60,000.

At the city’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center on Wednesday, Rose-Thamar Joseph said many of the roughly 15,000 immigrants who arrived in the past few years were drawn by good jobs and the city’s relative affordability. But a rising sense of unease has crept in as longtime residents increasingly bristle at newcomers taking jobs at factories, driving up housing costs, worsening traffic and straining city services.

“Some of them are talking about living in fear. Some of them are scared for their life,” Joseph said.

A “Welcome To Our City” sign hangs from a parking garage downtown, where a coffee shop, bakery and boutique line Springfield’s main drag, North Fountain Street. A flag advertising “CultureFest,” the city’s annual celebration of unity through diversity, waves from a pole nearby.

Melanie Flax Wilt, a Republican commissioner in the county where Springfield is located, said she has been pushing for community and political leaders to “stop feeding the fear.”

“After the election and everybody’s done using Springfield, Ohio, as a talking point for immigration reform, we are going to be the ones here still living through the challenges and coming up with the solutions,” she said.

Ariel Dominique, executive director of the Haitian American Foundation for Democracy, said she laughed at first at the absurdity of the false claims. But seeing the comments repeated on national television by the former president was painful.

“It is so unfair and unjust and completely contrary to what we have contributed to the world, what we have contributed to this nation for so long,” Dominique said.

The falsehoods about Springfield’s Haitian immigrants were spread online by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, on the eve of Tuesday’s debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s part of a timeworn American political tradition of casting immigrants as outsiders.

“This is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame,” Trump said at the debate after repeating the falsehoods. When challenged by ABC News moderator David Muir over the false claims, Trump held firm, saying “people on television” said their dogs were eaten, but he offered no evidence.

Officials in Springfield have tried to tamp down the misinformation by saying there have been no credible or detailed reports of any pets being abducted or eaten. State leaders are trying to help address some of the real challenges facing the city.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said Tuesday he would add more law enforcement and health care resources to an aid package the state has already provided to Springfield.

Many Haitians have come to the U.S. to flee poverty and violence. They have embraced President Joe Biden’s new and expanded legal pathways to enter, and have shunned illegal crossings, accounting for only 92 border arrests out of more than 56,000 in July, the latest data available.

The Biden administration recently announced an estimated 300,000 Haitians in the U.S. could remain in the country at least through February 2026, with eligibility for work authorization, under a law called Temporary Protected Status. The goal is to spare people from being deported to countries in turmoil.

Springfield, about 72 kilometers from the state capital of Columbus, suffered a steep decline in its manufacturing sector toward the end of the last century, and its population shrank as a result. But its downtown has been revitalized in recent years as more Haitians arrived and helped meet the rising demand for labor as the economy emerged from the pandemic. Officials say Haitians now account for about 15% of the population.

The city was shaken last year when a minivan slammed into a school bus, killing an 11-year-old boy. The driver was a Haitian man who recently settled in the area and was driving without a valid license. During a city commission meeting on Tuesday, the boy’s parents condemned politicians’ use of their son’s death to stoke hatred.

Last week, a post on the social media platform X shared what looked like a screengrab of a social media post apparently out of Springfield. The post claimed without evidence that the person’s “neighbor’s daughter’s friend” saw a cat hanging from a tree to be butchered and eaten, outside a house where it claimed Haitians lived. It was accompanied by a photo of a Black man carrying what appeared to be a goose by its feet.

On Monday, Vance posted on X: “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.” The next day, he posted again, saying his office had received inquiries from Springfield residents who said “their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants.”

Longtime Springfield resident Chris Hazel, who knows the park and neighborhood where the pet and goose abductions were purported to have happened, called the claims “preposterous.”

“It reminds me of when people used to accuse others and outsiders as cannibals. It’s dehumanizing a community,” he said of the accusations against the city’s Haitian residents.

Sophia Pierrilus, the daughter of a former Haitian diplomat who moved to the Ohio capital of Columbus 15 years ago and is now an immigrant advocate, agreed, calling it all political.

“My view is that’s their way to use Haitians as a scapegoat to bring some kind of chaos in America,” she said.

With its rising population of immigrants, Springfield is hardly an outlier. So far this decade, immigration has accounted for almost three-quarters of U.S. population growth, with 2.5 million immigrants arriving in the United States between 2020 and 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Population growth is an important driver of economic growth.

“The Haitian immigrants who started moving to Springfield the last few years are the reason why the economy and the labor force has been revitalized there,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which provides legal and social services to immigrants across the U.S.

Now, she said, Haitians in Springfield have told her that, out of fear, they are considering leaving the city.
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Voting by noncitizens in US is rare. Republicans aim to keep it that way

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‘Childless cat ladies’ and ‘anti-family’ assertions give rise to natalism

Parenthood has become politicized this election season. As U.S. birthrates decline and more Americans choose not to start a family, some portend the collapse of the U.S. economy and society. But experts say it’s not that simple. Tina Trinh reports.
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Mounting North Korean threats await next US president

washington — Recent moves by Pyongyang have focused attention on what will be one of the first major foreign policy challenges facing the next U.S. president: how to deal with North Korea’s rapidly developing nuclear threat.

In a set of rapid-fire developments on Friday:

— North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for an “exponential increase” in the size of his nation’s nuclear arsenal, according to the state-run news agency KCNA. He made the same call in speeches on Tuesday and on the last day of 2022.

— State media released photos for the first time of the Nuclear Weapons Institute where North Korea processes uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The photos, which showed a sophisticated array of centrifuges, were made public as Kim toured the facility.

— North Korea announced that it had tested a new type of 600 mm multiple rocket launcher the previous day. South Korea said on Thursday that North Korea test-fired several short-range ballistic missiles into the waters off the eastern coast.

The developments came in the context of enhanced military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, which is believed to be helping Pyongyang to develop its weapons capabilities in exchange for munitions used in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The threat from North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs has been growing steadily and virtually unchecked over the course of several U.S. administrations,” said Evans Revere, a former State Department official with extensive experience negotiating with North Korea.

“Whoever the next U.S. president is, she or he will face a more sophisticated and dangerous North Korean threat.”

Revere said in an interview that the winner of the U.S. election would have to find ways to weaken the link between Moscow and Pyongyang “and demonstrate to Beijing that its ‘partnership without limits’ with Russia is a dangerous and ill-advised path that will yield no benefits” for China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared in May a “new era” in opposition to the U.S. and reaffirmed the “no limits” partnership that was first announced just days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

While China has held back on providing Russia with arms for its war effort, the United States has accused it of delivering electronic components and other dual-use items that are keeping Moscow’s arms industry afloat.

Pyongyang, for its part, denies participating in any arms transfers to Russia, an act that would violate United Nations sanctions.

But a report this week by Conflict Armament Research, a U.K.-based group that tracks weapons in armed conflicts, said parts from four North Korean missiles have been found in Ukraine.

The missiles, examined by Kyiv, are either KN-23 or KN-24, known as Hwasong-11 short-range missile series, and thought to have been used in attacks in July and August, the report said.

Pyongyang-Moscow military ties have also been expanded to include tourism, trade, and economic and technical cooperation.

This makes the use of sanctions less effective as a policy tool to counter North Korea’s nuclear buildup, according to Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration.

“That’s not as much leverage now as it was before because of the Russian-North Korean relationship,” said Samore. “The U.S. doesn’t have very strong economic leverage that it can use with North Korea.”

With few obvious policy options available, the two presidential candidates – former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris – have largely confined themselves to criticizing each other’s approach without laying out any specific plans to roll back the North Korean threat.

At Tuesday night’s televised debate, Harris criticized Trump for exchanging “love letters with Kim Jong Un” during his presidency while Trump disapproved of the current administration’s handling of the issue, saying, “Look at what’s going on in North Korea.”

During his presidency, Trump held three summits with Kim but the diplomatic effort ultimately failed when Trump refused Kim’s demand for sanctions relief in exchange for a partial rollback of his nuclear program.

There have been no formal talks between the two countries since, although the Biden administration insists it is open to negotiations without preconditions, a policy that Harris could be expected to continue if elected.

The Biden administration also maintains that its goal remains the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, even as many experts suggest it is time to acknowledge that Pyongyang will not give up its weapons and say the international community should focus on containment.

Samore predicted that a Harris administration would continue to say that “as an ultimate objective … the U.S. seeks denuclearization in the long term.”

A second Trump administration, he theorized, may say “denuclearization is no longer possible” and “accept North Korea as a nuclear power.”

Robert Rapson, who served as charge d’affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul from 2018 to 2021, said much would depend on how the winner of the election decides to work with regional allies South Korea and Japan.

“In the likely absence of any grand outreach towards Pyongyang, Harris will have to carefully manage the relationship with ally Seoul, with a focus for the foreseeable future on maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula,” he said.

He added that it was “uncertain at this moment” whether Trump would feel compelled to reach out to Kim and whether he would diminish the value of the alliances with South Korea and Japan.

Eunjung Cho contributed to this report.
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Trump refuses to criticize Loomer, alarming Republican allies

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, California — Donald Trump refused on Friday to weigh in on recent racist and conspiratorial comments from right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer, who traveled with him earlier this week to the debate and several 9/11 memorial events.

“Laura’s been a supporter of mine,” Trump told reporters at a press conference near Los Angeles, where he was pressed on concerns from Republican allies about his ongoing association with Loomer.

“I don’t control Laura,” Trump said. “I can’t tell Laura what to do. She’s a supporter.”

Trump said Loomer has “strong opinions” but said he was unaware of her recent comments, including a post on X in which she played on racist stereotypes by writing that “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center” of his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, wins in November. Harris is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants.

Loomer’s appearances on the campaign trail with Trump have alarmed many of the former president’s allies who worry he is hurting his chances of winning in November, particularly as Harris has driven up Democratic enthusiasm and repeatedly put Trump on the defensive in Tuesday’s debate. Harris was campaigning Friday across Pennsylvania.

Loomer’s comments have drawn rebuke from Trump allies, including Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Georgia congresswoman, herself known for spreading conspiracies, called the post about curry “appalling and extremely racist” and said it did not represent Trump’s movement.

Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, called Loomer “a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans. A DNC plant couldn’t do a better job than she is doing to hurt President Trump’s chances of winning reelection. Enough.”

Trump’s comments came at a news conference at his Los Angeles-area golf club after days of criticism of his performance at this week’s debate.

Trump, in remarks, unleashed against Harris a litany of attacks that his aides had suggested he would focus on during the debate, including accusing her of having been soft on crime in her previous positions.

Before she served as vice president, Harris represented California in the Senate and also served as the state’s attorney general and the district attorney of San Francisco.

“She destroyed San Francisco, and she destroyed the state,” Trump charged. He also assailed the ABC anchors who moderated the debate. He’ll travel later Friday to northern California for a fundraiser, followed by a rally in Las Vegas, the largest city in swing state Nevada.

Harris headed to Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre on Friday, campaigning in counties where Trump won in 2016 and 2020, as she tries to capitalize on her momentum after Tuesday night’s debate.

It’s her second day of back-to-back rallies after holding two events in North Carolina, another swing state, on Thursday. Her campaign is aiming to hit every market in every battleground state over four days, with stops by Harris, her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and other surrogates in Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia.

While speaking in Charlotte, Harris took a victory lap for her debate performance in which she needled Trump and kept him on the defensive. Recounting one moment while campaigning in North Carolina, she mocked Trump for saying he had “concepts of a plan” for replacing the Affordable Care Act.

“Concepts. Concepts. No actual plan. Concepts,” she said as the crowd roared with laughter.

Her campaign said she raised $47 million from 600,000 donors in the 24 hours after her debate with Trump.

Harris said the candidates “owe it to voters to have another debate.” But Trump said he won’t agree to face off with her again.

Trump’s morning press event was the second Friday in a row that the Republican has scheduled a news conference, although at his last appearance in New York, the former president didn’t take any questions. Instead, he railed for nearly an hour against women who have accused him of sexual misconduct over the years, resurrecting the allegations in great detail before his debate with Harris.

Harris has not held a news conference since becoming a presidential candidate, and the Democrat has sat for just one in-depth interview. Her campaign has said she will start doing more interviews with local media outlets in battleground states.
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Trump pledges to deport Haitians in Ohio city; Biden calls for attacks to stop

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, California / WASHINGTON — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump promised mass deportations of Haitian immigrants in an Ohio city on Friday, shortly after U.S. President Joe Biden called for attacks on that community to stop. 

“We will do large deportations in Springfield, Ohio,” Trump said at a news conference at his Los Angeles-area golf resort.  

While Trump, 78, continued his attacks on immigrants, he did not revisit false and derogatory remarks he made during his debate on Tuesday night with his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Those comments, including that the Haitian community was eating household pets, drew a sharp rebuke earlier Friday from Biden. 

At a White House event celebrating Black excellence, Biden referred to his White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, as a proud Haitian American. 

“A community that’s under attack in our country right now. It’s simply wrong. There’s no place in America. This has to stop — what he’s doing. It has to stop,” Biden said. 

Haitian community leaders across the United States said the Republican candidate’s remarks could put lives at risk and further inflame tensions in Springfield, where thousands of recent Haitian arrivals have boosted the local economy but also have strained the social safety net. 

Trump’s comments that “they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats” during the debate were the latest in a long list of lies about immigrants that have defined his political career. It followed a similar false claim spread by his running mate, U.S. Senator JD Vance of Ohio, on social media about Springfield’s new residents. 

City officials say they have received no credible reports of anyone eating household animals. Karen Graves, a city spokesperson, said she was not aware of recent hate crimes targeting Haitian residents but that some had been victims of “crimes of opportunity,” such as property theft.
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Comparing Trump and Harris: Where do they stand on top issues?

Former President Trump and Vice President Harris offer worlds-apart contrasts on top issues in presidential race
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Judge tosses some counts in Georgia election case against Trump, others

ATLANTA — The judge overseeing the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump and others on Thursday tossed out three counts in the indictment — including two counts brought against the former president — saying that they lie beyond the state’s jurisdiction. 

The case against Trump and others who are appealing an order allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue prosecuting the case is on hold while that appeal is pending. But Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee issued orders Thursday based on motions filed by two defendants, Shawn Still and John Eastman, who are not part of that appeal, meaning the case against them is not paused.

In the Georgia case — one of four criminal prosecutions against the Republican presidential nominee — a grand jury in August 2023 returned a 41-count indictment against Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging conspiracy to illegally try to overturn Trump’s narrow loss in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four people pleaded guilty last year after reaching deals with prosecutors.

Trump and other defendants tried to get Willis and her office removed from the case, arguing that a romantic relationship she had with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she hired to lead the case, created a conflict of interest. McAfee ruled that there was not a conflict of interest that warranted Willis’ disqualification, as long as Wade left the case. Trump and others have appealed, and the Georgia Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear arguments in December. 

The judge in March had thrown out six counts of the indictment, a ruling that prosecutors are appealing. Even with a total of nine counts quashed, 32 counts remain, including an overarching racketeering charge brought against all of the defendants.

At issue in Thursday’s ruling are two counts having to do with the filing of a document with the federal court in Atlanta that declared that Trump had won the state of Georgia and 16 Republicans who signed the document were the “duly elected and qualified electors” from the state.

One of the counts charges three of those Republicans, including Still, with filing false documents. The other charges Trump and others, including Eastman, with conspiracy to file false documents.

McAfee wrote that punishing someone for filing certain documents with a federal court would “enable a state to constrict the scope of materials assessed by a federal court and impair the administration of justice in that tribunal to police its own proceedings.” He concluded that those two counts must be quashed “as beyond the jurisdiction of this State.”

The third count charges Trump and Eastman with filing false documents, saying they “knowingly and unlawfully” filed a lawsuit with the federal court in Atlanta while “having reason to know” that the document included at least one “materially false” statement about the 2020 election in Georgia.

McAfee cited case law that says complaints filed in federal court fall within the scope federal perjury statutes and said the charge must be quashed.

A spokesperson for Willis said prosecutors are reviewing the order and declined to comment.
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Trump rejects 2nd debate against Harris as her campaign says it raised $47M

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As gender gap widens, will women push Harris to victory?

The U.S. presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump remains tight. But Harris has opened a sizable lead over Trump among one group of voters — women, who vote at higher rates than men. As VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports, Harris’ late entry into the race widened the political parties’ gender gap.
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Young voters could make difference in US presidential election, say analysts

This year, about 8 million young people will turn 18 and become eligible to vote. In all, an estimated 41 million members of Gen Z — people under age 27 — will be able to vote in the 2024 presidential election
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More than 67 million people watched Harris-Trump debate 

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Haitian Americans fear for their safety after Trump repeats false claims about immigrants

WASHINGTON — Haitian Americans said they fear for their safety after Donald Trump repeated a false and derogatory claim during this week’s presidential debate about immigrants in Ohio.

Haitian community leaders across the U.S. said the Republican candidate’s remarks about immigrants eating household pets during his debate with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris could put lives at risk and further inflame tensions in the small city of Springfield, Ohio, where thousands of recent Haitian arrivals have boosted the local economy but also strained the safety net.

“We have to be careful where we go,” said Viles Dorsainvil, 38, who says the Haitian community center he heads in Springfield has received threatening phone calls. The hostility has prompted one friend working at an Amazon warehouse to consider leaving, he said.

“He said that things are getting out of hand now; the way people are treating us, making bad comments about us,” Dorsainvil said.

Trump’s Tuesday remark that “they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats” is the latest in a long line of lies about immigrants that have defined his political career. It followed a similar false claim spread by his running mate, U.S. Senator JD Vance of Ohio, on social media about Springfield’s new residents.

City officials say they have received no credible reports of anybody eating household animals. Karen Graves, a city spokesperson, said she was not aware of recent hate crimes targeting Haitian residents but that some had been victims of “crimes of opportunity,” such as property theft.

The Haitian Times reported that some Haitian families in Springfield, Ohio, were keeping their children home from school, while other sources told the newspaper that they were subject to bullying, assaults and intimidation in front of their homes amid racist rhetoric amplified by social media.

The lie fed on frustrations of some in the western Ohio city, who say the 15,000 Haitians who have arrived in recent years to fuel the city’s economy, have also stressed limited resources at local schools and health clinics and driven up rents.

Tensions have increased since a Haitian driving without an Ohio license struck a school bus in 2023, killing 11-year-old Aiden Clark and injuring 26 other children.

“People are getting really fed up,” city resident Richard Jordan said at a city council meeting on Tuesday. “Things are going to get ugly.”

At that same meeting, Clark’s father Nathan Clark criticized Trump and Vance for exploiting his son’s death.

“They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis, and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members,” Clark said. “However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio.”

Last month, a white supremacist was ejected from a city council meeting after he made threatening statements towards Haitian immigrants.

‘My heart fell’

Ahead of the debate, billionaire Elon Musk amplified the lie further on his X social media platform, as did Republicans on the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.

Guerline Jozef, who heads the national advocacy group Haitian Bridge Alliance, said her group had been trying to knock down the rumor before the debate.

When Trump mentioned it, “my heart fell to the floor,” she said. “This has become a nationwide lie that people everywhere are repeating.”

For Taisha Saintil, now an analyst with the immigrant advocacy group UndocuBlack Network, said Trump’s remark brought back painful memories of being taunted when she arrived at a Florida elementary school in 2006.

Some 1.1 million Haitian Americans live in the U.S., about half of whom are immigrants, according to the Census Bureau. Long established in Florida and New York, Haitian immigrants have recently been moving to states like North Carolina and California to pursue work, Jozef said.

Seeking work

Springfield officials say the majority of Haitian migrants are in the country legally, drawn by jobs at warehouses and factories. They have opened two restaurants and seven groceries, according to a city fact sheet.

“While we are experiencing challenges related to the rapid growth of our immigrant population, these challenges are primarily due to the pace of the growth,” city manager Bryan Heck said in a video on Wednesday.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, said on Tuesday the state is providing $2.5 million to help the new residents get vaccines and other health services, and state police are being brought in to help enforce traffic laws. He said President Joe Biden’s administration should also provide aid to cities like Springfield that see a sudden increase in new migrants.

Trump’s comments could energize his supporters to help him win over undecided voters, particularly aggrieved white voters who feel a sense of their own decline in this country, said Republican strategist Mike Madrid, founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project.

“The attempts to dehumanize people is a long-proven strategy to work at a time when society’s undergoing change,” he said.

But that strategy risks spurring violence, Haitian American leaders said.

Democratic Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, the only Haitian-American in Congress, said Trump’s rhetoric endangers Haitians across the country.

“We’ve heard these stereotypes for years about Haitian people, Black immigrants, doing all these things that we know aren’t true,” she said.

Gepsie Metellus, who heads the Sant La Haitian neighborhood center in North Miami, said Trump’s comment was viewed as a “cheap political shot” in her community, but directly endangers those in Springfield.

“This rhetoric has a way of turning out really badly,” she said. 
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