How influencers flocked to Springfield chasing debunked rumors and attention

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — In a viral video that first appeared on Sept. 10, YouTube content creator Tyler Oliveira interviewed a Springfield, Ohio, resident who claimed he saw Haitian immigrants carrying away “over a hundred cats” in a white van.

“I watched them get pulled over with the cats and admit to the police that they was eating them,” the unnamed man said.

The Springfield police said they have no records to substantiate that claim, which Oliveira does not mention. The video has garnered more than 4.5 million views on YouTube.

Social media influencers and content creators with right-leaning followings have descended on Springfield since Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance and former president Donald Trump amplified baseless claims that Haitian immigrants there are eating pets. As they pursue clicks, their sensationalized videos and posts are helping spread the false and racist rumors.

After media and city officials debunked the pet-eating claims, conservative activist Christopher Rufo offered a $5,000 bounty for evidence that Haitian immigrants were eating cats in Springfield. His post on X announcing the bounty got 4.5 million views.

What Rufo came up with a few days later was a single grainy video from 2023 that claimed to show a cat on a grill that was filmed in Dayton, about 30 miles away. Officials in Dayton said the allegations were “irresponsible” and that they had found no evidence to support the claims.

At the same time, the flimsy threads sustaining the rumors on social media have unraveled. A widely shared Facebook post that claimed Haitian immigrants in Springfield were seen carving up a cat turned out to be fourth-hand gossip, according to reporting by NewsGuard. The person who made the post deleted it and apologized, according to NBC News. A viral photo of a man holding two geese that accompanied many posts making claims about Haitian immigrants in Springfield was actually taken in Columbus, about 50 miles away. The Ohio Division of Wildlife confirmed the man had picked up roadkill. Anthony Harris, a local influencer who said in a widely shared video of a City Commission meeting that Haitian immigrants were killing and eating ducks at a local park, has since admitted he had never seen it happen.

To shore up the false claim, Vance’s team shared with the Wall Street Journal a police report from a woman who suspected her Haitian neighbors had taken her cat. Anna Kilgore told the newspaper that her cat, Miss Sassy, had reappeared. Kilgore said she had apologized to her neighbors.

But some influencers have continued to suggest city officials and the media are hiding something. Their focus has expanded to other grievances long-standing residents have with the arrival of Haitian immigrants in Springfield in recent years, as well as unproven allegations of wrongdoing by immigrants.

A video posted by self-described “investigative reporter/gonzo journalist” Jonathan Lee Riches on Thursday shows him trailing a white passenger van through the city because “it was full of people” and it had no license plate. “It shows you there are things going on here in Springfield, Ohio,” Riches said. He did not respond to an email from NPR asking about his video.

Residents say they are being misrepresented

Tyler Oliveira’s video pivots away from pet claims to other tension points in the community, such as the allegation that Haitian immigrants are bad drivers. Last year, a Haitian immigrant who did not have a valid driver’s license struck a school bus, injuring many students and killing an 11-year-old boy.

The city doesn’t collect data on the nationality of those who are involved in crashes.

Oliveira’s video shows a short clip of a man driving, wedged between photos and videos of car wrecks.

The man in the video is a local Haitian community leader named Viles Dorsainvil. “He was portraying people driving recklessly,” Dorsainvil said during an interview at the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, where he is the executive director. “And he portrayed me as the person driving.”

Dorsanivil said the video clip of him driving was already online before Oliveira’s video was published, and that he has not been in any of the car accidents Oliveira showed.

The cover image of Oliveira’s video shows another local Haitian man appearing to hold a cat. But that image appears to be an edited frame from the video, in which the man never held a cat.

That man could not be reached for comment. Dorsanivil says he has spoken to the man and said he was distraught after seeing himself falsely portrayed.

“He was so afraid,” Dorsainvil said. “He was crying because he believed that would cause him some harm, not being able to work.”

NPR reached out to Oliveira for an interview but he did not respond.

How chasing a hot political moment benefits the bottom line

Right-wing influencers have a lot to gain by stirring up moral panics.

“Getting a lot of views can translate into direct financial benefit, and also help them expand their following for the longer term,” said Renée DiResta, the author of the recently published book, Invisible Rulers: The people who turn lies into reality about the role influencers play today.

“Media-fueled scare campaigns vilifying antifascist activists, critical race theory, LGBTQ education, DEI programs and immigrants have catapulted countless conservative influencers’ careers,” wrote Jared Holt, a senior research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue who focuses on extremism, in an opinion piece for MSNBC.

Many political influencers monetize their content via ads, subscriptions or crowdfunding, which means they have an incentive to create videos and posts that will lead to lots of views or clicks. And they are typically not penalized when they ignore traditional journalistic practices such as fact-checking.

(Oliveira posted a comment to his Springfield video on YouTube that says the video is “entirely demonetized” and includes a link for his Patreon account.)

“With social media curation being what it is, this means that they’re often incentivized to be sensational,” said DiResta. “They’re often ‘just asking questions’ – amplifying rumors themselves.”

Haitians’ long history of being targets of rumors

Haitians have long been a target of political attacks in the U.S., said Marcia Chatelain, a professor of African-American studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

“For me, as a Haitian-American in the United States who has followed presidential elections since I was a kid, nothing surprises me in terms of the strategy of maligning immigrants in order to make a larger political case,” Chatelain told NPR.

“Historically Haiti has always lingered in the minds of politicians because of the Haitian revolution in 1804, because of the uprisings of enslaved people on the island. Haiti has always shaped the political imagination as well as the political anxiety of the country,” she said.

When AIDS emerged in the United States in the 1980s, an early name the press coined for it following CDC’s analysis of risk factors was the “4H disease”: “homosexuals, heroin users, hemophiliacs, and Haitians.” The CDC later retracted the claim.

Trump repeatedly said Haitians have AIDS while he was president. He also suspended their temporary protective status — the legal status many Haitians in Springfield hold. Vance posted on X that communicable diseases in Springfield are on the rise.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the health department in Clark County, which includes Springfield, has reported decreases in infectious disease cases and sexually transmitted infection cases countywide. While there have been increases in TB and HIV cases, the number has remained low.

Targeting immigrants for their real or imaginary diet also has its own long history related to racial discrimination in the U.S. Dietary differences were even once used by a labor union to justify the 19th century Chinese Exclusion Act.

Anxiety runs high in Springfield under national spotlight

Springfield has been shaken by the attention. Bomb threats all over the city have resulted in evacuations from government buildings and school closures. Neo-Nazis and far-right groups have marched in town. Trump recently vowed to deport Springfield’s Haitian population en masse, even though the vast majority of the Haitian immigrants there are legally authorized to be in the U.S.

The threats don’t need to be severe to be disconcerting. On Sunday afternoon, during English-Creole language exchange classes at the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, NPR watched a man walk up to the door. He asked if “there [was] a Haitian guy … around.”

Heidi Earlywine, who was co-organizing the class and managing security, spoke to him briefly and asked him to leave after he asked for a restaurant recommendation. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the man said before getting in a car and driving off.

“[He said] ‘my friend said there were no geese over [at the park], so I had to come over here to get geese,” Earlywine said. She said she had already called the police multiple times that day due to security concerns.

All this has left Springfield’s Haitian population fearful, with some community members telling NPR that people they know are considering moving away.

At Rose Goute Creole restaurant on the south side of town, where the scent of spices, vegetables and herbs filled the room, Junior Bellevue said he moved to Springfield over a year ago to escape gang violence in Haiti. While he still feels safe, he said family members who also resettled in Springfield no longer do.

“My mom, she wants to leave,” Bellevue said. “My sister as well…because they are afraid.”

The restaurant’s owner, Rosena Jn Louis, said business has boomed. Newcomers from nearby cities have flocked to it in a show of support. But Louis also said she gets calls asking her if the restaurant serves cats and dogs. She said she responds by telling people that pets aren’t on the menu, and then tells them what the restaurant does serve.

A few doors down from the restaurant, Tangee Hepp, the manager of a public library branch, said she has been hurrying to and from lunch since the presidential debate to avoid having unpleasant encounters with people.

“The media coverage across the board has just added, I think, to everyone’s anxiety,” Hepp said. “I have seen a lot of just random or those independent journalists who are just walking around with their phone interviewing people.”

She has been monitoring YouTube and laments how unproven rumors are going unchallenged in the influencers’ videos. Hepp’s library branch often hosts the public library system’s only Creole interpreter and she’s worried about the branch becoming a target.

“I have spent some time crying about it because I can’t protect my staff. I’m just one person,” Hepp told NPR.

In the same strip mall, Haitian-American business owner Jacob Payen sells incense and prayer candles at his religious goods store.

“My business has not been the way it was because most of my clients, they’re afraid, most of my customers,” Payen said. “They’re afraid to leave their houses.”

He’s also a spokesperson for the Haitian Community Alliance. He hasn’t been interviewed by an influencer yet, but he’d welcome the chance to speak with one.

“Maybe I can convince them to change their mind at the end of our conversation,” he said. He is aware that some of the influencer videos portray Haitians as a burden to the city. “I strongly believe that these people, they’re not evil. They’re just, they’re just lost.”

Samantha Sommer and Chris Welter of member station WYSO contributed reporting to this story.