As Trump supporters made their way towards Nassau Coliseum on Long Island yesterday for a campaign rally, they were met with hundreds of counter protesters against their candidate, organized by the Coalition of Concerned Haitian American Citizens. The group was founded last week in response to the recent baseless claims made by Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio were stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets. Trump repeated the falsehood last week on the debate stage with Kamala Harris: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
“We are going to light a torch of freedom here today,” said the Coalition’s founder Carrie Solages, who took to the floor first. “And we are going to carry that torch to Florida, we’re going to carry that torch to Massachusetts. Every community where we have Haitian Americans, we are going to remind them to vote on November 5th.” According to the Census Bureau, the United States is home to over 730,000 Haitian immigrants, who are more likely than other immigrant groups to be naturalized citizens. New York is home to 163,000 Haitians, a population total that is second only to the Miami Metro area (231,000).
The Coalition boasts support from various organizations, including SEIU1199 healthcare workers’ union. According to the Migrant Policy Institute, Haitian immigrants account for 4% of the 546,000 immigrants working as nurses in the United States, and 5% of the 222,000 immigrant home health aides. Solages took the opportunity to remind the crowd of their outsize role in this sector: “If all Haitians and Haitian American medical professionals or health professionals were to take the day off in New York City, all of our hospitals would be shut down.”
Haitian pediatrician Dr. Marie Dupiton, speaking after Solages, laid out how potentially harmful the narrative spread by Trump and Vance is to children: “the children will suffer from trauma. They will think that their community really does eat cats and dogs if nothing is said about it. They plant the seed, making the children think that they are no good, that they are a group that is less human than others.”
Other speakers included Phil Ramos, Deputy Majority Leader of the New York State Assembly, and Arthur Katz, director of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center in Glen Cove who, according to Solages, reached out to the nascent group unprompted to offer his support.
Speaking later that evening in the Nassau Coliseum, Donald Trump again spread falsehoods about the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, calling them “illegal immigrants” despite being engaged in a legal immigration process. “We are getting them out of our country, they came illegally […] They still refuse to acknowledge that they need to go.”
