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A protest has been held by members of the Haitian community in Florida in response to Donald Trump's false claims that migrants have been eating people's pets in Ohio.
The former president and his 2024 running mate, JD Vance, have been widely condemned for repeating the suggestion that people in the Haitian population in the Ohio town of Springfield have been eating pet cats and dogs, as well as wildlife such as local geese.
On Sunday, around 200 people attended a protest outside North Miami City Hall to call out the remarks from the Republican White House hopefuls. Many of those in attendance were part of South Florida's Haitian community.
There were also suggestions that backlash to the comments could influence the results of November's race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in Florida, a state which has a Haitian American population of around 500,000.
"Mr. Trump made one big mistake," Hedder Pierre-Joseph, president of the Democratic Haitian Caucus of Florida, told the crowd at the protest, as reported by The Miami Herald. "He forgot that we are five generations in. The first boat load of Haitians landed on the coast of Pompano Beach in December 1973.
"We are U.S. citizens right now, and we are going to vote."
Florida is considered a long-shot target for Harris. Trump won the Sunshine State over President Joe Biden in 2020 by 3.3 points, with Florida considered to have become more Republican in recent years, as seen by the landslide reelection of Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022.
Numerous polls suggest that Trump is leading Harris in Florida by around 2-6 percent. With the hot topic issue of abortion to feature heavily in November's elections, numerous Democrats are expressing hope that Florida could now be more in play for the party.
Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former House representative who is running for Senator Rick Scott's Florida Senate seat, told the Miami protest that the Haitian population in the state could have a huge influence on November's election.
"You are entrepreneurial," she told the crowd.
"You're small business owners. You are our teachers. You are our nurses. You have made this community what it is today."
Trump's office has been contacted for comment via email.
Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster based in Miami, said that the Haitian voting population in Florida, which already tends to favor Democrats, may not be enough for Harris in November.
"In Florida, we've seen the state and the presidency decided by 537 votes [in 2000], so any group can potentially sway an election or the presidency for that matter," Amandi recently told the Los Angeles Times. "I just don't think it's on the cards in 2024."
Karen Graves, a spokesperson for the city of Springfield, said in a statement that "there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community."
Ohio's Republican Governor Mike DeWine strongly condemned Trump and Vance for pushing the false claim that members of the state's Haitian population were eating people's cats and dogs.
"As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield," DeWine wrote in an opinion piece for The New York Times.
"This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there."
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About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more