Haitian immigrants blamed for spread of HIV in Ohio

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Vice presidential candidate JD Vance has now claimed more than once that Haitian immigrants to Springfield, Ohio, are responsible for the rise in HIV infections in the region.

The Ohio senator first made the claim on Sept. 10, along with the false — and racist — allegation that Haitian immigrants were eating local residents’ pets. After claiming that a Haitian man had murdered a child, Vance went on to say that “local health services are overwhelmed” and “contagious diseases — like tuberculosis and HIV — are on the rise.”

He repeated this claim after the debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump. Speaking to CNN’s Kaitlin Collins, Vance said, “Infectious diseases like HIV and tuberculosis have skyrocketed in this small town in Ohio. That’s the result of Kamala Harris’ border policy.” Vance repeated this claim on Face the Nation on Sunday. He framed this as a problem of Harris’ “open borders,” saying, “Thanks to her open border, there’s a spike in HIV cases in Springfield, Ohio. Thanks to her open border, murders in Springfield, Ohio have increased by 81%.”

Vance’s comments are part of a larger racist campaign that both the former president and vice president are waging against Haitian immigrants in Ohio. During Tuesday night’s debate before an audience of more than 67 million Americans, Trump lied that Haitian immigrants were eating Springfield’s pet population. Vance repeated that claim multiple times in television interviews and, as previously mentioned, on social media.

In a stunning admission he made on CNN on Sunday morning, Vance admitted that the stories about Haitians eating pets were false.

“The American media completely ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” Vance said, according to NPR. “If I have to make up stories to get the American media to actually pay attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

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About 15,000 Haitian immigrants live in Springfield, Ohio, according to The Guardian. Some had already faced violence and resistance from neo-Nazi groups in the area before Trump’s comments; Haitian churches have been broken into and vandalized, black residents report harassment because of their suspected Haitian heritage, and one man was sentenced to 20 years in prison for attacking eight Haitians.

But violence has escalated since Trump and Vance went on the offensive. Late in the week, just days after Trump lied onstage about Haitians, the city was forced to close schools twice in two days because of bomb threats. According to NBC, Haitians have also been afraid to leave their homes since Tuesday. Wittenberg University, a college in the city, also received a shooting threat against Haitians after Trump’s comments.

The racist scapegoating of Haitians has a long political history, but also a very personal one for Trump. A 2017 report New York Times The report specifically noted that the president claimed that the 15,000 Haitians who entered the United States in 2017 “all had AIDS.” He also called Haiti a “shithole.”

Haitians have also long been the target of racist scaremongering surrounding the AIDS crisis. In 1983, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed, without any specific information, four risk groups that became popularly known as the “4-H Club.” These included homosexuals, heroin addicts, hemophiliacs, and Haitians.

Ironically, Vance and Trump continue to falsely blame immigrants for rising HIV rates, when we know that it was actually right-wing policies that led to some of the worst HIV outbreaks in the Midwest in recent history. As governor of Indiana, Mike Pence, who served as vice president during Trump’s only term, caused a rash of new HIV cases by defunding Planned Parenthood, the only facility that provided HIV testing in some counties in the state. Pence also refused for months to open a needle exchange to curb the number of new infections, despite health experts advising him to do so.

Them has reached out to the Ohio Department of Health for comment on whether there has been an increase in HIV diagnoses in Springfield, Ohio or the surrounding county.

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Originally appeared on them.