Former President Donald Trump said he would take away the protected status of the Haitian migrants in Ohio.
Talking to NewsNation in Texas, Mr. Trump said, “In my opinion, it’s not legal. It’s not legal for anybody to do.”
“It has nothing to do with Haiti or anything else. It doesn’t work. You have to remove the people, and you have to bring them back to their own country,” he said.
“Springfield is such a beautiful place. Have you seen what’s happened to it? It’s been overrun. You can’t do that to people,” he said, adding he’d “revoke [the protected status and] bring them back to their country.”
The former president said Haiti would take the migrants back.
“Well, they’re going to receive them, they’ll receive them. If I bring them back, they’re going to receive them,” Mr. Trump said.
The comments are a continuation of the claims that Haitian migrants in Springfield are eating residents’ pets, despite local government and law enforcement saying the assertion is false.
Mr. Trump’s remarks on that issue in his debate last month spread across social media and caused the city to experience threats of violence that prompted schools and other buildings to be evacuated.
The migrants in the state are under the Temporary Protected Status program, which lets them live and work in states for a period of time.
On its website, Springfield notes that 12,000 to 15,000 migrants are in Clark County and that they are there legally.
Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance disputed that point in his vice presidential debate Tuesday. He said of the Customs and Border Protection phone app, “You can go on as an illegal migrant and apply for asylum or apply for parole and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand. That is not a person coming in and applying for a green card, waiting for 10 years.”
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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