Springfield, Ohio (CNN) — From his small apartment here, Vilbrun Dorsainvil makes video calls to Haiti to spend time with his fiancée and their daughter, whom he never had a chance to meet.

Three years ago, Dorsainvil said he was faced with an impossible choice: risk his life to stay in Haiti and witness the birth of his child or flee the gang violence that had torn his country apart and placed a target on his back.

“I didn’t want to leave, to tell you the truth, but they were after me,” he told CNN. “You go to medical school, they think you have money after graduation … but it was nothing, you know, (I was) just helping the community.”

Ultimately, his fiancée helped him decide.

“She told me, ‘I know it’s hard, but they come after you, you’ve got to leave.’”

And so, like thousands of Haitians in recent years, Dorsainvil fled Haiti for the United States, where he was granted temporary protective status to remain in the country. And, like thousands of Haitians, he chose to settle in Springfield, Ohio, where his brother lived and the surrounding community made him feel safe and welcome.

But that sense of safety has been shattered in the past week, as this small Ohio town became inundated with threats after former President Donald Trump and his vice-presidential running mate began pushing unfounded claims that immigrants in the city are stealing and eating pets.

Clark State College, where Dorsainvil studies nursing, closed its campuses and moved to virtual learning this week after receiving separate threats of a bombing and a shooting on campus. The hospital where he works as a rehabilitation nurse was also forced to close because of the threats.

Dorsainvil told CNN living under that constant specter rekindles some of the fear he felt in Haiti.

“I was saying to myself, ‘Oh OK, I come here to find some peace and I fled my country because of that, and right now the same thing is happening,” he said. “That’s hard.”

‘We did not have threats seven days ago’

There may be those who are tempted to make light of Trump’s claim during last week’s presidential debate that immigrants in Springfield are “eating the pets of the people that live there,” but for the city’s Haitian community, it’s no laughing matter.

“There are concerns for our safety and future,” said Madet Merove, a Haitian immigrant and United Methodist pastor who lives in Springfield. “I’m wondering what Haiti has done to the world that they hate us so much.”

At a news conference Thursday, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine praised law enforcement agencies – including the FBI and ATF – for marshalling resources to help protect Springfield.

Andy Wilson, Ohio’s director of public safety, said “every day we are getting multiple bomb threats,” but stressed that they’ve all turned out to be a hoax.

“In the environment that we have people are going to do stupid things,” Wilson said. “If you think you can get a rise out of somebody by doing something like that – calling a bomb threat in – if you get caught you are going to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

The governor previously said Springfield has received more than 30 threats since late last week. Two local Walmarts and multiple schools have been evacuated this week because of threats. And though each one was unfounded, they have contributed to the very real sense of fear and frustration in the community.

Schools in the city reopened Tuesday with additional security from the state’s highway patrol, including tower cameras and bomb detection dogs. And at a news conference later that day, Springfield Mayor Rob Rue thanked the governor for continuing to debunk the false claims and urged national leaders to “tamper their words and speak the truth.”

“We did not have threats seven days ago, we did not have these concerns seven days ago, we did not have these hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent in Springfield and from the state of Ohio seven days ago,” he said.

Rue has previously noted Springfield experienced a 25% growth in population over the past three years. On its website, the city estimates 12,000-15,000 immigrants live in Springfield and surrounding Clark County.

The mayor and city officials have consistently noted Haitian immigrants are residing in Springfield legally under the Immigration Parole Program, which the Biden administration launched in 2023 to offer “safe and orderly” pathways to the United States for nationals of Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba facing urgent humanitarian needs.

Margery Koveleski, herself a Haitian immigrant to the US and longtime Springfield resident, said many Haitians choose to live in Springfield because word spread that the city was safe, cost of living was low and there was an opportunity to find work.

“Before you know it, it was almost like if there’s a Good Friday sale and you got a great deal at Macy’s, you tell all your friends and the stores are packed,” she said.

But the sudden influx in immigrants has also placed a strain on the city’s limited resources. Earlier this year, Bryan Heck, Springfield’s city manager, wrote a letter to US Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, requesting additional federal support for the city. In it, Heck noted the surge in population has made it difficult for the city to provide housing for all residents.

“Despite 2,000 additional housing units set to come online over the next three to five years, this is still not enough,” he wrote in the letter.

This month, DeWine’s office announced the state would allocate $2.5 million to expand primary care services in the city and offer additional translation services to better address the needs of immigrant patients.

And, after a spike in traffic incidents – including a car accident involving a Haitian immigrant that resulted in the death of an 11-year-old boy – the governor’s office directed the Ohio State Highway Patrol to increase traffic enforcement. The city also plans to offer driver training geared toward Haitians and Creole speakers.

But at a recent city commission meeting, some Springfield residents said they were concerned too many resources were pouring into immigrant communities instead of helping locals.

“People are really getting fed up,” one man said at the meeting. “A lot of people feel like that. I’m not the only one, but I’m man enough to say it.”

Haitians don’t want handouts but to ‘add value’

Koveleski admits she’s seen a lot of change in her city in recent years. After 9/11, she and her family uprooted their lives in New York City and moved to what she calls “Slow-hio.” They settled in Springfield and opened a mattress store, but over the decades Koveleski said the city began to decline and their family business struggled.

“We went bankrupt because we couldn’t find anyone to work,” she said, adding many local businesses experienced the same downturn.

But that’s changed, she said, with the increase of Haitian immigrants. Koveleski now works as a Haitian Creole translator and community activist.

“There’s two sides to a story, and yes (some residents) feel like it’s an invasion and we’re losing a lot of resources. But with Haitians, we don’t want handouts because we’re here to work. That’s the Haitian mentality – they want to add value.”

One Ohio-based temp agency told CNN the demand for work in the wider Springfield area is high and it estimated most of the people it connects to nearby companies are Haitian.

“At this point we are probably a 60/40 split,” said Corey Worden, president of the staffing agency Job Talent Connect.

His agency helps connect any potential employee with companies in the area who need workers. They even work with the companies to help provide transportation for a small fee to those who may want to work but don’t have a way of getting there – it’s a service available to any worker, not just immigrants.

Trump said Wendesday that he intends to visit Springfield “in the next two weeks.”

Mayor Rue said at a news conference Thursday that a visit from either presidential candidate would tax the city’s already limited resources.

“Should he choose to change his plans, it would convey a significant message of peace to the city of Springfield,” he said.

Back in his apartment, Dorsainvil is begrudgingly taking virtual classes, which he says are harder than going in person because English is his second language.

He said the past week has changed his predominately Haitian neighborhood. People used to walk along the sidewalks and greet each other; now they’re scared to leave their homes.

But despite the threats, Dorsainvil said he has reason to hope.

“The past couple of few days, I was feeling a little bit down, but for some reason I feel better right now. You know why? Because my teachers, coworkers, friends – even people who didn’t have my contact – they reached out to me somehow, asking, ‘How are you holding up? We love you; we need you here,’” he said. “So, there’s a lot of love in this society.”

Dorsainvil said he hopes Springfield will return to how it was before the city became a political lightning rod.

And he said he also wishes people back in Haiti – including his fiancée and daughter – will one day get to experience the same peace of mind and stability that brought him to the city in the first place.

“Unfortunately, we cannot take all the Haitians coming here. We have to build a country back there,” he said. “I think one day I will get back and help.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

(CNN) — Waves of emotion washed over DeJuana Thompson as she stood in the convention hall in Chicago last month watching Vice President Kamala Harris become the first Black woman nominated for the presidency by a major political party.

“I absolutely was overwhelmed with what can only be described as ancestral pride,” said Thompson, who lives in Birmingham, Alabama.

But “literally two seconds” later, reality hit her, she said. “I was like, ‘Lord, we have work to do.’”

Around the country, Harris’ historic candidacy has unleashed a surge of activism among Black women like Thompson, who have long been a key part of the Democratic coalition but are now working overtime to advance the nomination of a woman who also shares their ancestry. On Thursday night, Oprah Winfrey – in collaboration with a group known as Win With Black Women – will hold a massive, virtual rally, aimed at uniting groups of Harris supporters to turn out the vote. Harris is slated to participate.

Tens of thousands of people already have expressed interest in the “Unite for America” livestream – which will take place across several platforms, ranging from YouTube to Twitch, organizers said. The event, which kicks off at 8 p.m. ET Thursday, is an outgrowth of a Zoom meeting that Win With Black Women hosted within hours of President Joe Biden ending his reelection bid on July 21.

That event quickly ballooned to more than 90,000 participants – between those on the Zoom and those tuning in through other means – delivering an early and powerful sign of Black female support for Harris’ historic bid.

“There is a real clear understanding that this election is a monumental election,” Win With Black Women founder Jotaka Eaddy told CNN.

Groups led by Black women also are launching new political ventures to aid Harris. Alpha Kappa Alpha, the historically Black sorority Harris joined as a student at Howard University, recently created its first political action committee. Another Black sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, is undertaking its first ad campaign to get out the vote, with commercials running through September. The National Council of Negro Women, meanwhile, has joined together with its member chapters and dozens of affiliated groups, such as the Black youth organization Jack and Jill of America, on a drive to register Black women and young voters between the ages of 17 and 24.

“It hits differently when someone who looks like me is at the top of the ticket,” said Daria Dawson, executive director of the voter mobilization group America Votes and the first African American woman to lead the organization. “There’s a renewed sense of urgency.”

Hillary Holley, a veteran of Stacey Abrams’ unsuccessful campaigns to become Georgia’s first Black and first female governor, now runs Care in Action – the political arm of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.

Harris’ ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket dramatically changed the outlook of activists on the ground and the donors who support their efforts, Holley said.

Before Biden’s departure from the race, Holley, who lives and works in Georgia, had invited donors to an August 8 meeting in Atlanta to deliver a pep talk of sorts for contributors, reminding them of the election’s stakes, even if they were less than enthusiastic about the president’s campaign.

But when Harris emerged as the party’s standard-bearer, interest in the event soared, Holley said – with 80 donors, all but a handful of them Black women, gathering in the basement of a home in southwest Atlanta, suddenly eager to do more.

“These Black women have been stepping up and really carrying Democrats over the finish line for years, decades and many, many election cycles,” Holley said, “because we knew we had to engage in elections to protect our communities.”

“Now, we get the best of both worlds,” she added. “We get to do it for a woman who deeply knows our struggles. We’ve been waiting for this moment.”

The campaign budget for Holley’s group has jumped to $15 million – up from an original target of about $9 million, she said. Care in Action now plans outreach to 6.8 million voters in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, with a goal of turning out women of color in those states who already are registered to vote but often sit out elections.

But Holley and other activists said their arguments to voters transcend Harris’ identity. Care in Action workers – who include nannies, house cleaners and other care workers – are focused on “financial freedom” and will point to Harris’ economic proposals as they work to persuade voters to back her in the weeks ahead, Holley said.

‘Black women lined this up’

Black women make up one of the most reliable Democratic voting blocs – with 90% of them backing Biden in 2020, according to the exit polls. Their support for the Democratic presidential nominee soared to 96% in 2012, when Obama was last on the ballot.

“The secret sauce of Black women is that it’s not just us, it’s how we motivate and influence,” said veteran activist Melanie Campbell, chair of the Power of the Ballot Action Fund. “We get the men to show up, our sons, our daughters, our nieces, our nephews.”

Back in 2020, Campbell was among the Black women who urged Biden to pick a female African American running mate. And she was among the Black women who publicly urged Biden to remain in the race, following his poor June 27 debate performance.

Campbell said she feared that Democrats – once Biden left the race – would move to bypass the vice president. The message from Black women was: “No, she got the 14 million (primary) votes he got,” Campbell said. “It was Biden-Harris.”

And the groundswell of Black female support for Harris became apparent on the day Biden ended his bid when tens of thousands of people joined Win With Black Women’s regular Sunday evening Zoom to rally behind the vice president, said Steve Phillips, a veteran Democratic strategist and donor.

“Black women lined this up,” he said.

The Win With Black Women meeting on July 21 quickly raised $1.5 million in about three hours, according to Eaddy, the group’s founder. She said $20 million has now been raised by an array of grassroots groups aiding Harris’ campaign. (Some of those organizations, including White Dudes for Harris, Win With Black Men and Swifties for Kamala, have been invited to join Thursday’s virtual rally with Harris and Winfrey.)

Battleground North Carolina

In North Carolina, a state that Donald Trump won by about 74,000 votes out of some 5.4 million cast in 2020, groups led by Black women are crisscrossing the state in a scramble to expand the electorate. Black residents make up about 21% of the state’s population, and North Carolina is home to nearly a dozen Historically Black College and Universities.

Thompson, the Alabama activist, is the founder of Woke Vote, an organization that in 2017 helped elect Doug Jones as Alabama’s first Democratic US senator in a quarter century. In this election, her work focuses heavily on a handful of states, including North Carolina and Georgia, which Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020.

The Tar Heel State marked Trump’s tightest margin of victory four years ago, and Harris is trying to become the first Democratic presidential contender to win the state since Barack Obama in 2008. Thompson, who worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign in North Carolina, is focused on turning out rural Black voters in the eastern part of the state often overlooked by traditional outreach efforts, she said.

Black female organizers in the state also are extending their reach far beyond other Black women.

Janice Robinson is the North Carolina program director of an organization called Red Wine & Blue, which engages in “relational” organizing. She is encouraging diverse groups of suburban women to turn out their friends, neighbors and relatives for Harris and other Democrats in the Tar Heel State.

At a house party on a recent Friday morning in the Charlotte area, about a dozen people – mostly White women – gathered with Robinson to strategize over coffee, pastries and orange juice. Holding up her cellphone, she walked them through a tool to share information about the election with other North Carolinians in their contact lists.

“People listen to the people that they trust,” she emphasized.

Her goal is to get 40,000 voters to the polls in North Carolina.

The North Carolina chapter of America Votes, meanwhile, is working with an array of other organizations to reach 4 million voters in the state – a record quadrupling of its outreach in past elections, said Ashlei Blue, the group’s state director.

Deputy director Nervahna Crew is a veteran of several presidential elections in North Carolina, including 2016, when she logged so many miles door-knocking and literature-dropping for Hillary Clinton that she developed a cyst on her right foot. Crew said she worked “overtime” in that election, in part, to honor her grandmother Mary Starkey, a stalwart Democratic activist from Delaware who desperately wanted to cast a ballot to elect Clinton as the nation’s first female president but passed away in 2015.

This election cycle, Crew’s nonpartisan day job keeps her mostly focused on voter turnout rather than working directly on behalf of a candidate. But her commitment to making history in the presidential election hasn’t waned, she said.

“At the end of the day, what you’re not going to do is blame Black women for not doing their job,” she said. “If we’re not successful this time around, it won’t be because we didn’t give it our all.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

(CNN) — Margery Koveleski says “Why Springfield?” is something she’s been hearing a lot lately.

“Everybody asks the question,” says Koveleski, a community activist and translator in the Ohio city who’s been helping its growing Haitian population.

Springfield is now home to thousands of Haitians. Last week’s presidential debate thrust the small city into the national spotlight, prompting even more people to wonder how a Haitian community has taken root there — and why.

Here’s a look at some key questions, and the answers we know so far.

How many Haitians are living in Springfield?

There’s no official tally. Mayor Rob Rue told CNN the city’s population has grown about 25% over the past three years, in part due to the arrival of Haitian immigrants.

Between 12,000 and 15,000 immigrants are living in Clark County, which includes Springfield, according to estimates on the city’s website. Of that group, an estimated 10,000-12,000 are Haitian, according to a July presentation from the county’s health commissioner, who cited data from school and social services officials.

The 2020 Census estimated about 60,000 people were living in Springfield, and 2022 data from the American Community Survey indicated about 2% of the city’s population was born outside the US.

Did a government program send them there for resettlement?

No. Immigrants have chosen to live in Springfield due to its low cost of living and available work, according to a city website, which notes that “no government entity is responsible for the influx of Haitians into Clark County.”

“Any system is going to struggle with the rapid population growth we have seen,” Clark County Health Commissioner Chris Cook told the Springfield City Council in July as he stressed the importance of getting more resources and funding to help.

“This is not part of a federal resettlement program. … It’s not someplace it was planned, and it’s not someplace those resources initially go by policy,” he said.

So how did they end up there? And why was Springfield their destination?

Officials and Springfield residents who’ve spoken with CNN say employment opportunities and word of mouth drew an influx of immigrants to the city.

Koveleski, the interpreter and community activist in Springfield, said word that jobs were available spread quickly among Haitians’ family and friends.

“Before you know it,” she told CNN’s Omar Jimenez, “it was almost like, ‘If there’s a good Friday sale and you got a great deal at Macy’s, you tell all your friends, and the stores are packed.’”

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said businesses in the area are grateful to have the help of a growing labor force.

“Ohio is on the move, and Springfield has really made a great resurgence with a lot of companies coming in. These Haitians came in to work for these companies,” he told ABC on Sunday. “What the companies tell us is that they are very good workers. They’re very happy to have them there, and frankly, that’s helped the economy.”

Has something changed with Haitian immigration to the US?

Yes. In recent years, the number of Haitians in the US who’ve been given permission to work here legally has grown.

In January 2023, the Biden administration announced Haitians would be among a new group of nationalities eligible for a program officials hoped would create more lawful pathways into the US and decrease pressure at the border. Under the program, applicants are vetted and must have a sponsor in the United States. Approved participants are granted travel authorization and permission, known as parole, that allows them to enter the United States legally.

More than 210,000 Haitians have been paroled into the US through the program, according to data released this week by US Customs and Border Protection. And Haitians make up the largest share of participants in the program, which also provides pathways for Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.

Department of Homeland Security officials have credited the program with decreasing illegal border crossings, but it’s also drawn criticism and legal challenges from Republican attorneys general who’ve argued the program itself is illegal. Officials paused the program for several weeks this summer over fraud concerns but restarted it last month, saying they’d added additional safeguards and vetting for sponsors.

Cook, the Clark County health commissioner, pointed to the parole program as one of several immigration routes the community’s Haitians had taken to the US. He also cited a family reunification program that allows lawful permanent residents and citizens to bring family members legally to the US, and to humanitarian parole granted at the border.

The Biden administration also expanded deportation protections for Haitians in the country earlier this year, estimating that about 300,000 people would be newly eligible for temporary protected status under the designation.

Has this happened before?

The situation in Springfield follows a familiar pattern, according to Julia Gelatt, associate director of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute’s US immigration policy program.

“We know that immigrants tend to move to places with economic opportunity, and then, once immigrants settle in a new destination where there are jobs and where life is good, then they tell their friends and family, whether back home or in other parts United States, and then people follow their social networks,” Gelatt said. “We’ve seen this since old European migration waves, but also more recently.”

In the 1990s, for example, tensions flared as immigrant populations seeking work moved into small towns and cities in the Southeast.

“When there’s a fast pace of change within a locality, that tends to be where we see more tensions emerge over the cost of immigration or over social differences,” she said. “The tensions that we’re seeing in Springfield, and also the patterns, are things that have played out across the United States in many periods of our country’s history.”

What’s bringing Haitian immigrants to the US?

There’s a long history of Haitian immigration to the US in response to political instability, economic crisis and natural disasters, Gelatt says. More recently, intensifying gang violence following the 2021 assassination of Haiti’s president has driven many to leave the country.

“Haiti’s had severe economic challenges, and more recently, just an immense gang presence that has really threatened rule of law and safety for many people in Haiti, and disrupted the operations of many basic functions of the country,” Gelatt said.

Some more recent Haitian arrivals to the US had been living for years in South America but left the region when job opportunities dried up.

“Some Haitians who had been living in South America and had kids there and were building their lives made a secondary move to the United States, where they saw greater economic opportunity for themselves,” Gelatt said.

Is the parole program connected to similar increases in immigrant populations in other parts of the US?

It’s quite likely, given what history has shown us about immigration patterns, but we don’t yet have government data breaking down where participants in this program or their sponsors live. CNN has reached out to US Citizenship and Immigration Services to request that data.

An April report from the House Homeland Security Committee listed airports around the country where participants in the program have arrived in the US. That report, based on data from January-August 2023, listed Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and New York City as the top destinations, with a total of more than 160,000 arrivals in those airports.

The report also lists more than 50 other airports in the US and Canada connected with the program, including in Cincinnati and Columbus, but does not specify the number of arrivals in those Ohio cities.

What’s been happening in Springfield since the immigrants arrived?

Last week’s baseless comments from former President Donald Trump during the presidential debate, accusing migrants in Springfield of eating pets, drew national attention to the city. The claims have been widely discredited, but the spread of misinformation has tapped into real concerns from locals about the city’s growing pains, people living in the area told CNN.

In a July letter addressed to Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Tim Scott of South Carolina, City Manager Bryan Heck said housing shortages have presented a “crisis” for the city as far back as 2018 and that the city’s expanding population has added stress.

DeWine, Ohio’s governor, said this week he was providing additional state support for the city to help with stress on healthcare and public safety systems due to the influx of immigrants.

But in an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” the Republican governor stressed the economic benefit the Haitian immigrants are bringing to the city.

“When you go from a population of 58,000 and add 15,000 people onto that, you’re going to have some challenges, and some problems, and we’re addressing those,” he said.

But he described the Haitian immigrants as a “positive influence.”

“People who want to work, people who value their kids, who value education, you know, these are positive influences on our community in Springfield,” he said, “and any comment about that otherwise, I think, is hurtful and is not helpful to the city of Springfield and the people of Springfield.”

CNN’s Chelsea Bailey, Omar Jimenez, Meridith Edwards, Chris Boyette, Jack Forrest and Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this report.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.