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America’s long history of anti-Haitian racism, explained

Published

1 year ago

September 15, 2024

America’s long history of anti-Haitian racism, explained

This past week, Republicans amplified a barrage of strange and racist claims about Haitian immigrants, including falsely suggesting that they’re consuming people’s house pets.

The unfounded attacks came from official party social media accounts, lawmakers, and from both members of the GOP’s presidential ticket. Vice presidential candidate JD Vance said Monday that “Haitian illegal immigrants” are “causing chaos,” while former President Donald Trump emphatically, and falsely, claimed during his Tuesday debate with Vice President Kamala Harris that, “they’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country.”

The comments echo well-worn tropes, and past attempts to tie Haitian immigrants to everything from the spread of illness to upticks in crime.

Republicans have elevated these messages as they seek to make immigration a flashpoint in the November election, capitalizing on voters’ dissatisfaction with current trends. The attacks also come as rampant political instability and gang violence in Haiti has displaced thousands of people — and as the Biden administration has approved temporary protections and humanitarian parole for some new arrivals.

The stereotypes the GOP is harping on, however, have been around for much longer.

In fact, as experts tell Vox, these types of ugly attacks are the byproduct of centuries of anti-Black racism and xenophobic sentiment, which have been used over and over to justify restrictive immigration policies that single out Haitian people. The decision to resurface them in 2024 is, once again, creating a palpably dangerous environment, and adding to this legacy.

“It’s a part of a very old historic pattern,” Regine Jackson, a sociologist and the Dean of Humanities at Morehouse College, told Vox. “It’s the idea that they could do something so inhuman, so un-American. That’s the message underneath, that these people will never be like us.”

Anti-Haitian racism has deep roots

Attacks on Haitian immigrants tap into the longstanding US framing of Haiti as a threat.

“Racism and xenophobia against Haitians among white Americans can be traced all the way back to the Haitian Revolution when Haitians … [overthrew] the system of slavery and [established] the world’s first Black republic,” Carl Lindskoog, the author of a book on the US’s detention of Haitian immigrants, told Vox. “Since then, Haitians have been seen by many white Americans as a threat to white rule and have been treated as such.”

In 1804, Haitians successfully overthrew colonial rule and enslavement by France. Concerned that Haitians’ victory would inspire enslaved people in America to pursue a similar revolution, the US did not recognize Haiti’s independence for nearly six decades.

Following the revolution, France used military force to demand financial restitution for loss of the colony, forcing Haiti to borrow money to cover its demands. The US and France provided those loans — and used them to continue exerting control over Haiti’s finances for years. In total, a New York Times investigation found that reparations to France cost Haiti’s economy $21 billion and directly contributed to poverty and financial problems that still plague the country to this day.

The US also occupied Haiti by force from 1915 to 1934, more than a century after its successful revolution, under the flimsy justification that it was there to ensure political stability following the assassination of multiple Haitian presidents. In reality, it mounted the occupation to prevent France or Germany from gaining ground in the region, which was viewed as strategically valuable. During this time, the US set up a system of forced labor, and sold Haitian land to American corporations.

The takeover also sent a demeaning message: that Haiti wasn’t capable of handling its own affairs.

“A lot of scholars have talked about … rhetoric that’s used to justify invasion around civilizing a society,” says Jamella Gow, a sociologist at Bowdoin University. “This notion of Haitians as backwards, criminal and dangerous started way back then.” The association of Haiti with voodoo practices, something self-help author Marianne Williamson, who ran in the Democratic presidential primary in 2020 and 2024, evoked this week, is another tactic that’s been used to suggest that they’re a “mysterious … migrant other,” says Gow.

In the decades since, the US’s treatment of Haitian immigrants has built on and reinforced these ideas. That was evident in the 1970s, when a wave of Haitian migrants sought asylum in the US as they tried to escape political persecution from US-backed dictator Jean Claude Duvalier. Many of these arrivals were detained and denied asylum, though they met the qualifications for it.

These practices set a precedent for the detention of asylum-seekers, a punitive approach the US still employs now. In a 1980 Haitian Refugee Center v. Civiletti case, the Fifth Circuit ruled that the US government had singled Haitians out and practiced blatant racism in its immigration policies. Despite this decision, then-President Jimmy Carter and his successors managed to find loopholes to keep up this approach. In the years that followed, while a surge of Cuban and Haitian migrants came to the US around the same time, Haitian people were far more likely to stay in detention compared to their Cuban counterparts.

The stigmatization of Haitian immigrants continued, too, in subsequent decades, including efforts to associate Haitians with illnesses, such as HIV. In the early 1980s, when no scientific name had been given to HIV/AIDS, the press and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deemed it the 4H disease — which stood for “Haitians, Homosexuals, Hemophiliacs, and Heroin users,” in part because some of the early cases of the illness included Haitian people.

A fear of HIV — and the framing of Haitian immigrants as carriers of disease — was among the reasons that led the US to detain Haitian asylum seekers at Guantanamo Bay during the 1990s. (Thousands were detained and deported, while some who were HIV-positive were threatened with indefinite detention.) That’s part of a long history of the US government deeming immigrants health hazards in order to stymie their entry into the country — a practice that was again embraced during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Both the Trump and Biden administrations used a federal authority known as Title 42 to turn away migrants due to public health concerns during and following pandemic. Haitians were one of the largest groups turned away at the southern border on these grounds, Lindsvoog said.

Other attacks on Haitians were also evident in both administrations, such as when Trump himself referred to Haiti as a “shithole” country, and when border patrol officers were captured riding on horses and using their reins to confront Haitian immigrants under Biden.

These types of attacks have real consequences

In the town of Springfield, Ohio, the latest GOP invective is already doing real-world harm.

On Tuesday, Trump gave the conspiracy its largest platform yet, and since then, the claims about the immigrants, which have been repeatedly debunked, have only spread.

In the wake of all this, Haitian immigrants in Springfield — the town in which the GOP claims the pet eating is taking place — have experienced property damage and are keeping their children home from school out of concerns for safety, the Haitian Times reports.

Springfield’s city hall was also evacuated on Thursday in response to a bomb threat, and two elementary schools were evacuated on Friday due to concerns about public safety. The municipality’s mayor has said he believes both incidents are tied to the claims that have been made about Haitian migrants.

Springfield, a town of roughly 60,000 people in the southwestern part of the state, has found itself in Republican crosshairs due to the changes it’s seen since 2020. About 15,000 Haitian people have moved to Springfield for jobs following a manufacturing boom there, and while the growth in population has helped rejuvenate the town, it’s also put pressure on social services in the form of longer wait times at medical clinics and more competition for affordable housing, fueling some animosity toward the newcomers.

That anger only intensified in 2023, following a school bus accident that killed 11-year-old Aiden Clark, since the driver of the car involved was a Haitian immigrant. Republicans and right-wing figures have since invoked Clark’s death to highlight the threat immigrants pose — something his parents have begged them to stop doing.

This hostility toward Haitian immigrants has resulted in neo-Nazis and Republican lawmakers spreading lies about immigrants eating not just pets, but also ducks from the local parks. There is no evidence of this, Springfield officials have said. One instance of a woman — neither an immigrant nor of Haitian descent — eating a cat took place in Canton, Ohio, which is many miles away.

Tropes about people eating pets aren’t new, and have long been used to demonize immigrant communities in the US, including Asian immigrants. Such stereotypes allow Republicans to paint immigrants, including Haitian people, as “forever foreigners” in a bid to ostracize them. The focus on pets, in particular, is designed to undercut immigrants’ humanity, and to suggest that they could harm something people hold dear, says Jackson.

”This kind of language, this kind of disinformation, is dangerous because there will be people that believe it, no matter how ludicrous and stupid it is, and they might act on that kind of information and act on it in a way where somebody could get hurt. So it needs to stop,” White House spokesperson John Kirby said at a press briefing Tuesday.

Vance downplayed these concerns after Tuesday’s presidential debate when he was asked about his comments by NBC’s Yamiche Alcindor. “What do I think is a bigger problem? Insulting 20,000 people or the fact that my constituents can’t live a good life because Kamala Harris opened the border?” Vance said.

As US history — and the threats Springfield faced this week — makes clear, however, these racist ideas can have a direct influence on policies, and lead to immediate, and dire, consequences.

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News

How the federal government is painting immigrants as criminals on social media

Published

8 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

How the federal government is painting immigrants as criminals on social media

Getty Images, Dept. of Homeland Security and The White House via X/Collage by Emily Bogle/NPR

Two days after At Chandee, who goes by Ricky, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the White House’s X account posted about him, calling the 52-year-old the “WORST OF WORST” and a “CRIMINAL ILLEGAL ALIEN.”

Except that the photo the White House posted was of a different person. The post also incorrectly claimed Chandee had multiple felony convictions — he has one, for second-degree assault in 1993 when he was 18 years old. He shot two people in the legs and served three years in prison.

At “Ricky” Chandee with his wife, Tina Huynh-Chandee.

Via the Chandee family

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Via the Chandee family

Chandee, who came to the U.S. as a child refugee, was ordered to be deported back to his home country, Laos. But Laos had not been accepting all of the people the U.S. wanted it to, so the federal government determined that it was likely infeasible to deport him, his lawyer Linus Chan told NPR. Chandee therefore was granted permission to stay in the U.S. and work so long as he checked in with immigration authorities periodically. He has not missed a check-in in over 30 years and has not had another criminal incident.

People who know Chandee do not see him as “worst of the worst.”

After Chandee completed his prison sentence, he finished school and became an engineering technician. He worked for the City of Minneapolis for 26 years, became a father, and his son grew up to join the military.

In his free time, Chandee enjoys hiking and foraging for mushrooms, Minnesota Public Radio reported.

“We are proud to work alongside At ‘Ricky’ Chandee,” said Tim Sexton, Director of Public Works for the City of Minneapolis in a statement. “I don’t understand why he would be a target for removal now, why he was brutally detained and swiftly flown to Texas, or how his removal benefits our city or country.” Chandee is petitioning for his release in federal court.

Chandee’s case is not unique

Social media accounts from the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and other immigration agencies have spent much of the past year posting about people detained in the administration’s immigration crackdown, typically portraying them as hardened, violent criminals. That’s even as over 70% of the people detained don’t have criminal records according to ICE data.

NPR’s research of cases in Minnesota shows that while many of the people who have been highlighted on social media do have recent, serious criminal records, about a quarter are like Chandee, with decades-old convictions, minor offenses or only pending criminal proceedings. Scholars of immigration, media and criminal law say such a media campaign is unprecedented and paints a distorted picture of immigrants and crime.

A year into President Trump’s second term, the X accounts of DHS and ICE have posted about more than 2,000 people who were targets of mass deportation efforts. Starting late last March, DHS and ICE began posting on X on a near daily basis, often highlighting apprehensions of multiple people a day, an NPR review of government social media posts show.

Among the 2,000 people highlighted by the agencies, NPR identified 130 who were arrested by federal agents in Minnesota and tried to verify the government’s statements about their criminal histories.

In most of the social media posts, the government did not provide the state where the conviction occurred or the person’s age. Public court records do not tend to include photos so definitive identification can be a challenge.

NPR derived its findings from cases where it was able to locate a name and matching criminal history in the Minnesota court and detention system, in nationwide criminal history databases, sex offender databases, and in some cases, federal courts and other state courts.

In 19 of the 130 cases, roughly 1-in-7, public records show the most recent convictions were at least 20 years ago.

Seventeen of the 19 cases with old convictions did include violent crimes like homicide and first-degree sexual assault. ICE provided some of those names to Fox News as key examples of the agency’s accomplishments. “It’s the most disturbing list I’ve ever seen,” said Fox News reporter Bill Melugin on X, highlighting the criminal convictions of each person on the list.

For seven people, their only criminal history involved driving under the influence or disorderly conduct.

ICE agents approach a house before detaining two people in Minneapolis on Jan. 13.

Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

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Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Six of the 130 Minnesota cases highlighted by the administration involved people with no criminal convictions. The government’s social media posts for those six instead rely upon the charges and arrests as evidence of their criminality, even though arrests don’t always lead to charges and charges can be dismissed.

In yet another case, the government highlighted a criminal charge even while noting it had been dismissed. (The person did have other existing convictions.)

For 37 of the 130 people, NPR was unable to confirm matching criminal history after consulting the databases and news coverage. Some of the names turned up no criminal history at all. The government said these people committed crimes ranging from homicide and assault to drug trafficking, and cited one by name to Fox News. NPR tried to reach out to all 37 people and their families for comment but did not receive a response from any.

In a statement to NPR, DHS’s chief spokesperson Lauren Bis did not dispute NPR’s findings or provide documentation where NPR wasn’t able to confirm matching criminal history.

“The fact that NPR is defending murderers and pedophiles is gross,” Bis wrote. “We hear far too much about criminals and not enough about their victims.” before listing four of the people with old convictions of homicide and sexual assault, underlining the date of deportation order for three of them.

Images designed to trigger emotion

The stream of social media posts with photos of mostly nonwhite people are meant to draw an emotional response, says Leo Chavez, an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. They “have been used repeatedly over and over to get people to buy into, really drastic, drastic and draconian actions and policies,” he said.

Chavez, whose most recent book is The Latino Threat: How Alarmist Rhetoric Misrepresents Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation, recalls how political campaigns in past decades presented images of Latinos — often men — without context. “Just by showing their image, showing brown people, particularly brown men, it’s supposed to be scary.”

The fact that the government’s social media posts come with statements about criminal history as well as photos reinforces that emotional response, Chavez said. DHS has previously acknowledged inaccuracies on their website. But even if the department issues corrections, Chavez said, “the goal was actually achieved, which was to reinforce the criminality and the visualization.”

CNN’s analysis of DHS’s “Arrested: Worst of the Worst” website showed that for hundreds out of about 25,000 people posted on the website, the crimes listed were not violent felonies. Instead, DHS listed people with records that included traffic offenses, marijuana possession or illegal reentry. DHS said the website had a “glitch” that it will fix but also that the people in question “have [committed] additional crimes.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this when it comes to immigration enforcement in the modern era,” said Juliet Stumpf, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School who studies the intersection of immigration and criminal law. She said the drumbeat of social media posts focused on specific individuals was like “FBI’s most wanted posters” or “like reality TV shows.”

Then-DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin, flanked by deputy director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Madison Sheahan (left), and Acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons, speaks during a news conference at ICE Headquarters, in Washington, D.C., on May 21, 2025.

Jose Luis Magana/AP

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Jose Luis Magana/AP

Stumpf drew a parallel with an incident from the 1950s when the U.S. government deported two permanent residents suspected of being communists. “The government was kind of proclaiming and celebrating their deportation because getting rid of these communists was making the country safer,” said Stumpf, “Maybe that’s comparable to something like [this].”

An analysis by the Deportation Data Project shows a dramatic increase in arrests of noncitizens without criminal records during President Trump’s current term compared to President Biden’s term.

“If you look at research, immigrants actually tend to commit fewer crimes than even U.S. citizens do. And that’s true of immigrants who have lawful status here and immigrants who don’t,” said Stumpf. “If we have a number of social media posts that are painting immigrants as the worst of the worst…it’s actually really putting out a distorted version of reality about who immigrants actually are.”

Some claims are disputed by other authorities

In some posts, DHS and ICE have also used photos of people and statements about their criminal histories to burnish the federal government’s accomplishments, defend their agents and criticize states like Minnesota. State and local authorities have in turn pushed back, and some of the federal government’s claims about the people it has detained have been met with setbacks in the courts.

DHS accused Minnesota’s Cottonwood County of not honoring detainers, written requests by ICE to hold prisoners in custody for a period of time so ICE can pick them up. In one post, the agency identified a person who was charged with child sexual abuse, writing “This is who sanctuary city politicians and anti-ICE agitators are defending.”

The Cottonwood County sheriff’s office said DHS’s post “misrepresented the truth” in their own post on Facebook. According to their account, the county did honor the detainer but ICE said it was unable to pick up the person before the order expired and the county had to release the suspect.

The Minnesota Department of Corrections wrote in a blog post that dozens of people DHS listed on its “Worst of the Worst” website were not arrested as DHS described, but were transferred to ICE by the state because they were already in state custody. The Corrections Department has since launched a page dedicated to “correct the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) repeated false claims.”

The “Worst of the Worst” website has some overlap with the department’s social media posts, but it contains a much larger number of people — over 30,000 nationally. It included a Colombian soccer star who was extradited to the U.S., tried in Texas, convicted of drug trafficking and served time in federal prison. The website incorrectly describes him as being arrested in Wisconsin. The soccer player, Jhon Viáfara Mina, recently finished his sentence early and returned to Colombia, according to Spanish newspaper El Diario Vasco.

In some instances, DHS and ICE wrote about incidents where they ran into conflict when carrying out arrests. In those posts, they named the arrestees and posted their photos. But in one case where the incident went to court, the government’s account of the events shifted. After a federal agent shot Julio C. Sosa-Celis in Minneapolis in January, DHS claimed he was lodging a “violent attack on law enforcement.” Assault charges against Sosa-Celis fell apart in court as new evidence surfaced, and the officers involved were put on leave.

Despite the fact that the charges were dropped, DHS’s post profiling Sosa-Celis remains online.

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Bill Clinton to testify before House committee investigating Epstein links

Published

20 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

Bill Clinton to testify before House committee investigating Epstein links

Former president Bill Clinton is scheduled to give deposition Friday to a congressional committee investigating his links to Jeffrey Epstein, one day after Hillary Clinton testified before the committee and called the proceedings “partisan political theatre” and “an insult to the American people”.

During remarks before the House oversight committee, Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, insisted on Thursday that she had never met Epstein.

The former Democratic president, however, flew on Epstein’s private jet several times in the early 2000s but said he never visited his island.

Clinton, who engaged in an extramarital affair while president and has been accused of sexual misconduct by three women, also appears in a photo from the recently released files, in a hot tub with Epstein and a woman whose identity is redacted.

Clinton has denied the sexual misconduct claims and was not charged with any crimes. He also has not been accused of any wrongdoing connected to Epstein.

Epstein visited the White House at least 17 times during the early years of Clinton’s presidency, according to White House visitor records cited in news reports. Clinton said he cut ties with him around 2005, before the disgraced financier, who died from suicide in 2019, pleaded guilty to solicitation of a minor in Florida.

The House committee subpoenaed the Clintons in August. They initially refused to testify but agreed after Republicans threatened to hold them in contempt.

The Clintons asked for their depositions to be held publicly, with the former president stating that to do so behind closed doors would amount to a “kangaroo court”.

“Let’s stop the games + do this the right way: in a public hearing,” Clinton said on X earlier this month.

The committee’s chair, James Comer, did not grant their request, and the proceedings will be conducted behind closed doors with video to be released later.

On Thursday, Hillary Clinton’s proceedings were briefly halted after representative Lauren Boebert leaked an image of Clinton testifying.

During the full day deposition, Clinton said she had no information about Epstein and did not recall ever meeting him.

Before the deposition, Comer said it would be a long interview and that one with Bill Clinton would be “even longer”.

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Read Judge Schiltz’s Order

Published

1 day ago

February 26, 2026

Press Room

CASE 0:26-cv-00107-PJS-DLM

Doc. 12-1 Filed 02/26/26

Page 5 of 17

and to file a status update by 11:00 am on January 20. ECF No. 5. Respondents never provided a bond hearing and did not release Petitioner until January 21, ECF Nos. 10, 12, after failing to file an update, ECF No. 9. Further, Respondents released Petitioner subject to conditions despite the Court’s release order not providing for conditions. ECF Nos. 5, 12–13.

Abdi W. v. Trump, et al., Case No. 26-CV-00208 (KMM/SGE)

On January 21, 2026, the Court ordered Respondents, within 3 days, to either (a) complete Petitioner’s inspection and examination and file a notice confirming completion, or (b) release Petitioner immediately in Minnesota and confirm the date, time, and location of release. ECF No. 7. No notice was ever filed. The Court emailed counsel on January 27, 2026, at 10:39 am. No response was provided.

Adriana M.Y.M. v. David Easterwood, et al., Case No. 26-CV-213 (JWB/JFD)

On January 24, 2026, the Court ordered immediate release in Minnesota and ordered Respondents to confirm the time, date, and location of release, or anticipated release, within 48 hours. ECF No. 12. Respondent was not released until January 30, and Respondents never disclosed the time of release, instead describing it as “early this morning.” ECF No. 16.

Estefany J.S. v. Bondi, Case No. 26-CV-216 (JWB/SGE)

On January 13, 2026, at 10:59 am, the Court ordered Respondents to file a letter by 4:00 pm confirming Petitioner’s current location. ECF No. 8. After receiving no response, the Court ordered Respondents, at 5:11 pm, to immediately confirm Petitioner’s location and, by noon on January 14, file a memorandum explaining their failure to comply with the initial order. ECF No. 9. Respondents did not file the memorandum, requiring the Court to issue another order. ECF No. 12. On January 15, the Court ordered immediate release in Minnesota and required Respondents to confirm the time, date, and location of release within 48 hours. ECF No. 18. On January 20, having received no confirmation, the Court ordered Respondents to comply immediately. ECF No. 21. Respondents informed the Court that Petitioner was released in Minnesota on January 17, but did not specify the time. ECF No. 22.

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