Donald Trump shocked audiences at this week’s presidential debate with the claim that foreign migrants were eating household pets in Springfield, Ohio, a small town currently reeling under the strain of an unprecedented number of new arrivals, mostly from Haiti. “They’re eating the dogs,” Trump said. “They’re eating the cats.”

Reactions on both sides were spirited. Conservative social media accounts created memes that portrayed Trump, dressed in camouflage, and toting heavy weapons, as the savior of innocent pets. There was even a viral TikTok trend, which chopped up Trump’s speech and set it to dance music. “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating cats,” the music thumped. “Eat the cat! Eat, eat the cat!”

The establishment media was not amused. During the debate, ABC’s David Muir dismissed Trump’s rhetoric with his version of a fact check, citing the Springfield city manager’s statement that “there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.” Other publications went further, blasting the former president for spreading a “racist smear,” a “century-old stereotype,” and a “cat-eating conspiracy theory.”

So, is there any truth to the charge? We have conducted an exclusive investigation that reveals that, yes, in fact, some migrants in Ohio appear to have been “eating the cats,” though not exactly in the manner that Trump described.

Our investigation begins in a run-down neighborhood of Dayton, Ohio, the closest major city to Springfield, about a half-hour’s drive away. We identified a social media post, dated August 25, 2023, with a short video depicting what appear to be two skinned cats on top of a blue barbeque. “Yoooo the Africans wildn on Parkwood,” reads the text, referring to Parkwood Drive. The video then pans down to two live cats walking across the grass in front of a run-down fence, with a voice on the video warning: “There go a cat right there. His ass better get missin’, man. Look like his homies on the grill!”

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We spoke with the author of the video, who asked to remain anonymous but confirmed its time, location, and authenticity. He told us that he was picking up his son last summer, when he noticed the unusual situation. “It was some Africans that stay right next door to my kid’s mother,” he said. “This African dude next door had the damn cat on the grill.”

We then identified the home by matching it to the visuals in the video and cross-referencing them with the eyewitness. When we knocked on the door of the first unit, a family answered, telling us they were from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and that all of the surrounding units were occupied by other African migrants.

One of the residents told us that her former neighbors, also from Africa, had lived in the adjacent unit until last month. They had a blue grill and the father would find meat in the neighborhood. “Her dad was going to find meat,” she said. “Her dad was going, holding a knife.” The current residents also showed us a blue grill of the same make and model as in the video, which the former neighbors had abandoned after they moved out. There were at least ten cats wandering around the complex and another resident complained that they were breeding on the property.

According to the original witness, whose son was friendly with the neighbors, there was no doubt about what happened last summer. “They was barbecuing the damn cat!” he said. His son’s mother had previously witnessed the family butchering a mammal on the street, but the cats on the barbeque put him in such a state of shock, he felt the need to film it.

To be clear: this single incident does not confirm every particularity of Trump’s statement. The town is Dayton, not Springfield; cats alone were on the grill, not cats and dogs. But it does break the general narrative peddled by the establishment media and its “fact checkers,” who insisted that this has never happened, and that any suggestion otherwise is somehow an expression of racism.

It takes only a single exception, however, to falsify a hypothesis, and the logical next step, for any honest broker, is to ask if it is happening more often, and elsewhere. It is not implausible. Many developing nations, including the Congo and Haiti, have traditions of animal sacrifice or consumption of what Americans would consider household pets. And if this occurred in Dayton, where the migrant population is relatively small, it could be going on down the road in Springfield, where it is relatively much larger.

Independent journalists are already on the hunt and could reveal more. The Daily Wire has dispatched a reporter to Springfield to investigate. The Federalist has published a police report with allegations that a group of Haitians emerged from a city trail with dead geese in hand. Ohio’s attorney general, Dave Yost, has backed up this claim, arguing that citizens with such firsthand knowledge “would be competent witnesses in court.”

There is a legitimate debate to be had about migration and culture. All immigrants bring with them a particular tradition, which, in the case of countries such as Haiti and the Congo, can include practices that many Americans find disturbing. This cultural divide causes understandable consternation for non-migrants living in the rougher parts of places like Dayton and Springfield. They don’t enjoy the luxury of many in the establishment media, who can maintain a safe distance, condescending to those who raise the alarm while not even bothering to investigate anything themselves.

These revelations do not mean that assimilation is impossible, but the establishment will need to engage in a more honest debate, rather than simply smearing critics as racists and conspiracy theorists. One can make the case for migration, but one cannot, at the same time, deny that it comes with costs—which, in this case, seem to include a pair of flayed cats on a blue barbeque in Dayton, Ohio.

John Legend is standing up for his hometown of Springfield, Ohio, following Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s baseless claims that Haitian immigrants in the city are eating people’s pets.

In a nearly six-minute-long clip posted on Instagram and TikTok on Thursday, Sept. 12, the Grammy winner asked his followers to “love one another” and have “the same kind of grace that we would want our ancestors to have when they moved here with our Haitian brothers and sisters.”

“Nobody’s eating cats. Nobody’s eating dogs. We all just want to live and flourish and raise our families in a healthy and safe environment,” he said.

The musician said that his birthplace had been “shrinking for decades” due to not having “enough opportunity” until President Joe Biden brought “more manufacturing jobs, more plants, factories that needed employees and were ready to hire people.”

According to Springfield’s official website, the total immigrant population in Clark County is approximately 12,000 to 15,000 people.

The population increase is something that Legend said would undoubtedly lead to “growing pains” in the city.

“But the bottom line is these people came to Springfield because there were jobs for them, and they were willing to work,” he said. “They wanted to live the American dream, just like your German ancestors, your Irish ancestors, your Italian ancestors, your Jewish ancestors. Your Jamaican ancestors, your Polish ancestors – all these ancestors who moved to this country.”

The father of four ended his clip by expressing, “John R. Stevens [his birth name] from Springfield signing off.” He also changed his display name on Instagram to “John R Stephens – Springfield, Ohio.”

Springfield, Ohio, became a topic of conversation after Vance wrote in a Monday, Sept. 9, post on X that he has previously raised the issue of Haitian immigrants “causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”

During a segment on immigration during the presidential debate on Tuesday, Sept. 10, the baseless claims were then repeated by Trump.

“In Springfield, [Ohio,] they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people who live there, and this is what’s happening in our country,” he said.

Moderator David Muir then interjected to note that the city manager of Springfield has publicly stated “there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

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Karen Graves, strategic engagement manager for Springfield, also confirmed to PEOPLE the city has not received any credible reports of Haitian immigrants abducting and eating pets.

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — The woman behind an early Facebook post spreading a harmful and baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating local pets that helped thrust a small Ohio city into the national spotlight says she had no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and is now filled with regret and fear as a result of the ensuing fallout.

“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, told NBC News on Friday.

Lee recently posted on Facebook about a neighbor’s cat that went missing, adding that the neighbor told Lee she thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.

Newsguard, a media watchdog that monitors for misinformation online, found that Lee had been among the first people to publish a post to social media about the rumor, screenshots of which circulated online. The neighbor, Kimberly Newton, said she heard about the attack from a third party, NewsGuard reported. 

Newton told Newsguard that Lee’s Facebook post misstated her story, and that the owner of the missing cat was “an acquaintance of a friend” rather than her daughter’s friend. Newton could not be reached for comment.

Lee said she had no idea the post would become part of a rumor mill that would spiral into the national consciousness. She has since deleted the Facebook post. 

Other posts have also contributed to the false allegations, including a photo of a man holding a dead goose that was taken in Columbus, Ohio, but was spread by some online as evidence of the claims about Springfield. Graphic video of a woman who allegedly killed and tried to eat a cat was also found not to have originated in Springfield but in Canton, Ohio, and does not have any connection to the Haitian community.

Local police and city officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence of such crimes in Springfield, but that hasn’t stopped the lies from spreading across the country and igniting a national frenzy that landed on the presidential debate stage this week. Former President Donald Trump and his running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who was born less than an hour away from Springfield, have repeated the baseless allegations.

Lee said she never imagined her post would become fodder for conspiracy theories and hate.

“I’m not a racist,” she said through heavy emotion, adding that her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that, and that was not my intent.”

The anti-immigrant fervor in Springfield led to school and municipal building closures on Thursday and Friday after city officials received bomb threats. 

Lee said she pulled her daughter out of school and is now worried about her safety with so much attention on her family. She is also concerned for the safety of the Haitian community, which she said she did not intend to villainize en masse. 

“I feel for the Haitian community,” she said. “If I was in the Haitians’ position, I’d be terrified, too, worried that somebody’s going to come after me because they think I’m hurting something that they love and that, again, that’s not what I was trying to do.”

Immigrant advocacy groups have said these kinds of claims can be dangerous.

“The Haitian-American community in Springfield, OH and around the country is feeling targeted and unsafe because dehumanizing, debunked and racist conspiracies are being advanced at the highest levels of American politics and are still being repeated,” Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, a nonprofit that advocates for immigration refor said in an email. “The false claim that Black immigrants are violently attacking American families by stealing and eating their pets is a powerful and old racist trope that puts a target on people’s backs, and it is turbo-charged in the era of MAGA when political violence has become commonplace and we have already witnessed violent incidents incited by such rhetoric.”

Lee said that there are very real problems related to Springfield’s population boom that caught the struggling city off guard. Springfield was not prepared to address the housing, health care and other service needs that came with the sudden increase of new residents over the last five years when Haitians arrived, many of them with protected status under federal law. 

Still, she never imagined that her Facebook post would set off a national news cycle.

“I didn’t think it would ever get past Springfield,” she said.