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Donald Trump and JD Vance have stepped up their attacks on immigrants with baseless claims about Haitians abducting pets and Venezuelan gangs taking over apartment buildings, betting that attacking foreigners will help them win the US election.
Republican vice-presidential nominee Vance has in recent days fuelled a conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants have been stealing pets to eat them, in Springfield, Ohio, which he represents as a senator.
Even after local officials denied there had been any reports of pet abductions in the town, Vance doubled down on his attacks on Tuesday.
“My office has received many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who’ve said their neighbours’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants. It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumours will turn out to be false,” he said on X.
But he added: “Do you know what’s confirmed? That a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here. That local health services have been overwhelmed. That communicable diseases — like TB and HIV — have been on the rise. That local schools have struggled to keep up with newcomers who don’t know English.”
The false accusations about Haitians highlight the Trump campaign’s effort to put fear of immigrants at the heart of his re-election bid. The former president has vowed to crackdown on undocumented people in the US and to carry out the “largest deportation effort” in the country’s history.
Polls show Americans are concerned about the surge in migrants across the US’s southern border with Mexico in recent years, although the flow has slowed sharply this year.
Trump and Vance have responded by riling up their conservative base. Earlier this year, Trump successfully lobbied Republican politicians in the US Congress to reject a bipartisan compromise that would have placed much tighter restrictions on immigration through the southern border, on the grounds that it did not go far enough.
The former president built his 2016 campaign around attacks on Mexican immigrants. During his current run for the White House, he has accused migrants of “poisoning the blood” of the nation, drawing criticism for echoing the language of fascism and Nazi Germany.
But Trump has also fomented very specific, if unfounded, claims. Early this month, on a podcast, he said: “You saw in Aurora, Colorado, a group of very tough young thugs from Venezuela taking over big areas, including buildings. They’re taking over buildings. They have their big rifles.”
But while there has been an increase in Venezuelan immigrants in the town, Heather Morris, Aurora’s interim police chief, told National Public Radio last week that “gang members have not taken over the complex”.
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