Mia Perez started her Friday early, packing her 9-year-old daughter’s lunch and dropping her off at school before heading to a meeting at a community church in downtown Springfield, Ohio, by 9:30 a.m. For her daughter’s sake, she tried to act like everything was normal. It wasn’t. Unsettling rumors ignited on the national political stage were swirling through town that local immigrants were stealing and eating pets. The meeting had been organized by town religious leaders who were desperate to counter the claims.

Perez was already nearing her wits’ end at the meeting when her phone rang. Bomb threats had been made in the vicinity of the elementary school, she was told, and parents needed to come back for their children. It was the second day in a row this had happened. “I spilled coffee all over myself when I got the call,” Perez told me.

She rushed to the school and got her daughter. This time, her daughter had questions. Was it a school shooter, like she had heard about on the news? “I tried to explain the difference between an active shooter and a bomb threat, but how do you explain that to a 9-year-old?” Perez said. Her daughter’s next question was somehow worse: “Have we ever eaten a cat?”

Perez’s husband is Haitian. She is Cuban but had lived much of her life in Haiti before relocating to Springfield in 2017. She is an immigration lawyer and interpreter, helping newly arrived immigrants—mostly Haitians, though not exclusively—get a foothold in town. She told her daughter that, no, they do not eat cats. She tried to make her laugh, telling her everything tastes like chicken to her, anyway. For Perez’s part, she has cried nearly every day since this all began.

I arrived in Springfield last weekend on the heels of Donald Trump declaring at the presidential debate, “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.” That followed similar claims propagated by J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate and an Ohio senator who represents this city in Congress.

The consequences were immediate. White supremacist groups have been seen in town distributing racist fliers and trying to latch broad grievances to nonwhite people living there. There has been vandalism and more than 30 bomb threats, and a steady stream of people from out of town arriving to tell the new locals that they don’t belong there.

Not long after I got into town, I encountered a group of about 30 members of the Proud Boys, some with their preteens in tow, sporting custom-made yellow-and-black biker jackets emblazoned with the group’s logo. One I spoke to covered his face with a bandana and declined to give his name. He said there was nothing racist about opposition to Haitians here. “We want the government to prioritize Americans over immigrants,” he said. “If you want to come to our country and assimilate, we’ve got plenty of space. But you’ve got to do it our way, adopt our values. You can’t bring your culture here.” I asked another if she truly believed people were eating household pets in Springfield. “It’s possible they aren’t,” she said. “It’s just a meme. It’s just for fun at this point.”

The Proud Boys were certainly having fun. But the post-debate weekend I spent in Springfield showed the instant ramifications of campaign rhetoric taken to a disturbing extreme. The people here—longtime residents and new arrivals—had already been trying to fight growing local division. Now it had gone national, and they had no idea what to expect.

I did not find anyone who eats pets in Springfield. But it wasn’t very hard to find a resident who thought it was possible. On his porch near some railroad tracks, Ron, who has lived in Springfield for nearly two decades, sat with Trump flags on either side of him. His only immediate neighbors are Haitian. “They stare at you,” he said. “I don’t hate them. It’s just the way they came over here to get all this stuff.” He thinks it’s possible the rumors about pets are true.

Ron told me he worked for Walmart for his whole life until about 2012. When he was 56 years old, he stopped working and has been collecting disability checks and food stamps. “They get more than I ever got,” he said, expressing frustration over the government assistance provided to immigrants. He only gets $23 a month in food stamps.

Ron is Black and resents accusations that this is about racism or bigotry—he said it was about demographic influx—though he maintained he wasn’t so sure the cat rumors were false. He also floated a theory that someone conspired to bring Haitians to replace him and his neighbors. “I see them getting all the houses,” he said. His own rent jumped from $600 to $800.

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