Former president Donald Trump continued attacking the immigrant population in an Ohio town during a campaign rally Monday in Pennsylvania, saying, “You have to get them the hell out.”
As Trump spoke in Indiana, Pa., the crowd chanted, “Send them back!”
For weeks now, Trump has singled out Springfield, Ohio, over its Haitian population, echoing baseless claims that immigrants are eating pets and calling the immigrants illegal, despite their legal status. His attacks have upended life in the small town, where the Republican mayor has pleaded for civility amid bomb threats and event cancellations for security reasons.
Trump made his latest comments about Springfield at Monday’s rally while accusing Democrats of wanting to “inundate Pennsylvania communities” with migrants, “changing the character of small towns and villages all over our country and changing them forever.”
“Do you think Springfield will ever be the same?” Trump said. “The fact is — and I’ll say it now — you have to get them the hell out. You have to get them out. I’m sorry. Get them out. Can’t have it. … They’ve destroyed it.”
Trump’s campaign promoted a video clip of Trump’s comments on X.
After the chants, Trump added: “It’s terrible to say, and it’s a tough thing to do.”
Trump has long promised mass deportations in his 2024 campaign for the White House, though he has not provided much detail. And his comments Monday appeared to continue conflating the situation in Springfield with concerns about illegal immigration.
“What’s going on in Springfield is just fundamentally different,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said in a recent TV interview. “These people are here legally. They came to work. These are good people.”
DeWine previously said the bomb threats the city faced were “unfounded” and that many came from overseas. They nonetheless disrupted daily life in Springfield, forcing evacuations and lockdowns in schools, hospitals and city hall. DeWine dispatched state troopers to beef up security at Springfield schools, saying they will “help ease some of the fears caused by these hoaxes.”
Springfield’s mayor, Rob Rue, said Monday that residents are “still feeling anxiety from what their city has been put under since” the Sept. 10 debate in which Trump falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants there are “eating the pets.”
“We’ve asked before — and we’ll continue to ask — we need help, not hate,” Rue told MSNBC in an interview. “We need peace, and I’m asking the leaders on the national stage to speak well of our city and to understand the weight of their words and the impact it has had on our city.”
Growing emotional later in the interview, Rue said it has “been a very stressful time.”