During the presidential debate last week, former President Donald Trump amplified misinformation about the Haitian immigrant community in Springfield, Ohio, claiming that “they’re eating the dogs…They’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” 

Let’s be clear: This rumor, which was debunked before Trump even took the debate stage, springs from deep racial animus against non-white immigrants, like those from Haiti. And while an overwhelming majority of Haitian immigrants are Christians, these rumors seek to paint them as Voodoo-practicing tribal pariahs that are tearing at the fabric of civilized society. 

But the claim that Haitian immigrants are kidnapping their neighbors’ pets and eating them is completely unsubstantiated. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” and the evidence in this case is extraordinarily lacking. 

Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, seems to understand that. He just doesn’t seem to care. 

In one interview, Vance hedged about the unsubstantiated claims, saying, “First of all, city officials have not said it’s not true; they’ve said they don’t have all the evidence.”

It is more accurate to say that Springfield officials have said they have no evidence of Haitian immigrants abducting people’s pets and eating them. Vance claims that “constituents on the ground” have contacted him with the claims. But none of those claims have been corroborated by law enforcement, city officials, journalists, or anybody else. 

In fact, a number of people have come forward to retract their claims and apologize to the Haitian immigrant community. 

“Whether those exact rumors turn out to be mostly true, somewhat true, whatever the case may be,” Vance went on to say, “this town has been ravaged by 23,000 migrants coming in…The media didn’t care about the carnage brought by these policies until we turned it into a meme about cats.”

“If we have to meme about it to get the media to care, we’re going to keep on doing it,” Vance added. “If every single thing that the media says about this story is false, the verifiable facts are that this community has had their lives destroyed by 20,000 migrants coming in and uprooting life.”

Did you catch that? To Vance, it does not matter much whether these wild accusations against Haitian immigrants are true, so long as they are effective in advancing the narrative that immigrants are “ravaging” Springfield, causing “carnage,” and “destroying” American communities.

In other words, so long as people are made to feel fear and hatred toward this specific minority group, the actual facts of the situation are immaterial.  

In another interview, Vance seemed to slip again, saying, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

When pressed, Vance clarified that when he said he was willing to “create stories,” what he meant was that he was “creating the American media focusing on it.”

This duplicity is as astounding as it is damaging. As a result of these unfounded rumors, Haitian community members in Springfield have been made to fear for their safety, with many holding their children home from school. The city has also responded to multiple bomb threats, which the governor said originated from outside the country. 

If you couldn’t tell already, I feel strongly that Christians must stand against the hatred and falsehoods leveled against immigrants in Springfield and other places around the country—for any number of reasons.

I’ll start with bearing false witness. Jesus cares about how his people treat their fellow Christians, as well as “the least of these.” In many cases, these Haitian immigrants are both of those things. 

According to one report, the fastest growing church in Springfield is the Haitian congregation. So when we misrepresent them, we are not only spreading falsehoods against fellow image-bearers but also fellow kingdom citizens.

Mark that. It’s a big deal. In 1 Corinthians 6, the Apostle Paul tells us when Christians malign and “defraud” one another in public before the watching world, it is to our “shame.”

Furthermore, I would hope that Christians might be more sympathetic to the humanitarian needs of migrants, regardless of their religion. The Scriptures are consistent and clear that the people of God welcome the sojourner. 

Many of these immigrants were forced to leave Haiti after the devastating earthquake of 2010 and the infrastructural collapse that accompanied it. Most are here legally, and they benefit the community by filling manufacturing jobs. 

Many of them need help integrating into the community, and local churches are supporting the immigrant community with English language classes and other programs. And while the population increase in the area has been a boon for the local economy, it has also taxed the infrastructure—a legitimate challenge to be addressed. 

But these challenges should be met—especially by Christians—with generosity and charity of spirit, not hatred and xenophobia. 

This has been the standard operating procedure for the church since its inception. In the New Testament, we see early Christians selling their personal property to supply for the needs of others. We also read accounts of Paul taking donations from churches throughout the Roman Empire to supply for the needs of Jerusalem Christians. These Christians didn’t think twice about making room for others. 

Early Christians faced down epidemics, natural disasters, and economic crises, often sacrificing their lives or livelihoods, to lift others up. 

By the fourth century, Christians were famous (or, to some, infamous) for caring for the needs of others—Christian or not. Caesar Julian once quipped, “They support not only their poor, but ours as well.”

Regardless of where a person sits on the political spectrum, it is almost universally acknowledged that the United States immigration system is fundamentally broken. And we can have robust debate and disagreement about what kind of legislation should be passed to address those shortcomings. 

But one thing is clear: Hatred is not an option.

By and large, the Christians on the ground in Springfield feel the same way. “In about five weeks the election is going to be over,” one local pastor told Christianity Today, “and we’re going to be left trying to sew up the tears.”

Living in Southern California, I’m not very well connected to the situation in Ohio. But I am friends with several immigrants and children of immigrants. My own grandparents were immigrants. These people are not our enemies. And even if they were, Jesus still told us to love them (Matthew 5:44).

The measure of our neighborly love is not how we interact with, respond to, or speak about the people who are most like us. Quite the opposite. Famously, when Jesus was asked about who we ought to consider our neighbors, he told a story about kindness expressed across the divides of race, national identity, and religion. 

We now refer to that story as the parable of the Good Samaritan.

In light of these realities, it is not going too far to say that stoking fear and hatred against our Haitian immigrant neighbors is quite literally antichrist. It is the work of the enemy. Where such hatred can be found in our hearts, we must repent of it. 

In this season of political acrimony, it’s easy to get turned around. That’s often by design. Politicians and media figures carefully craft messages to stoke our anxieties and prejudices in order to raise huge sums of money and secure their own interests.

My sense is that many Americans are tired of it. They just don’t know a better way. 

We do. 

As ambassadors of the heavenly kingdom, we are called to model a type of grace that is radically inclusive, wildly sacrificial, and indiscriminately applied—so much so that it makes respectable people nervous. But it is this very grace that broadens our vision and causes us to capture a glimpse of life as Jesus always intended it.