The small town of Springfield, Ohio, has been the epicenter of a media and social firestorm due to a wave of misinformation that has taken over the networks. In recent weeks, the accusation that Haitian migrants in an irregular situation They hunt and eat local domestic animals, especially domestic cats. However, local police have categorically denied these allegations.
The rumor began circulating on social media, quickly gaining traction, fueled by memes and posts on platforms such as Twitter, now known as “X.” “Please vote for Trump so Haitian migrants don’t eat us”reads one of the most shared comments, in an attempt to distort the discourse on immigration for the election campaign. Republican politicians, such as Senator JD Vance, have taken advantage of the panic and indignation to reinforce their anti-immigration discourse, emphasizing that this is just another example of the “chaos” caused by immigration policies.
Elon Musk himself joined the controversy, responding to messages mentioning that “20,000 Haitians eat people’s pets”. He even posted memes with images from “The Simpsons”, comparing the situation with scenes from the famous TV series, where Bart and Lisa bury one of their pets.
However, the story was denied by the authorities. Springfield police have clarified that there is no evidence that Haitian migrants are involved in hunting or eating domestic animals. The supposed “evidence” for these accusations, a viral video of a woman being arrested for eating a cat, was quickly debunked: the detainee is neither a migrant nor Haitian, but rather a U.S. citizen from the city of Canton, Ohio.
Despite efforts to debunk this information, misinformation continues to spread, fueling fear and mistrust within the community. The situation has generated racial and migratory tensions and has been exploited politically to feeding the discourse of the ultraconservative right in the final stretch of the presidential campaign.
The impact of these rumors was so strong that the police had to issue statements to calm the population, specifying that There is no real threat to local pets from migrants. Meanwhile, Springfield finds itself caught in the middle of a twisted narrative that mixes xenophobia and animal love, and is being used as an electoral tool in a divisive campaign.
