Over the past month, Donald Trump has amplified a widely debunked rumor that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, had eaten local pets, and he vowed to revoke a government program that allows many Haitians to temporarily live and work in the U.S. legally.
For Ronald Surin, it’s all felt personal.
“It’s hurtful and it’s outrageous, but it’s not the first time we’ve been used as a scapegoat for political gain,” Surin, president of the Haitian American Democratic Club of Broward County, said. “This country has a history of denigrating Haitians from the beginning.”
The onslaught by Trump and his campaign has thrust Haitians in Florida and around the country into the national political debate over immigration – an issue that Trump has kept at the core of his political brand since he launched his first presidential campaign in 2015 with a speech deriding Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and criminals.
Yet the response from national Democrats — including Trump’s rival in the November election, Vice President Kamala Harris — has been relatively muted.
In Florida, which has the largest Haitian population in the U.S., Harris’ campaign has yet to invest in advertising or voter-turnout efforts geared toward mobilizing Haitian-American voters — and prominent members of Florida’s Haitian community have taken notice.
“I’ve talked to some leaders in the Democratic Party and told them they need to do something. It’s not too late,” said Laurinus “Larry” Pierre, a Haitian-American physician and a longtime fundraiser for the party and candidates, adding that “the party needs to shape up.”
There are some efforts underway to counter the Trump campaign’s recent attacks on Haitians living in the U.S. The Florida Democratic Party, for example, is preparing a flight of Creole-language ads in an effort to reach Haitian-American voters, while some candidates like Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who’s running to oust U.S. Sen. Rick Scott next month, have attended events with members of South Florida’s Haitian community to rally against the Trump campaign’s claims about Springfield.
The Democratic National Committee announced last week that it would give over $400,000 to the Florida Democratic Party to fund “organizing staff, infrastructure, and tailored messaging to key coalitions,” though it’s unclear whether any of that money would be used to mobilize Haitian-American voters.
Earlier this week, a group of lawyers who are part of Immigrants’ List, a nonpartisan effort to get pro-immigrant candidates elected, began running Creole-languge ads on local Haitian radio stations using the voice of Miami-Dade County Commissioner Marleine Bastien.
Ira Kurzban, a leading immigration attorney who sued the Trump administration in 2017 when the Department of Homeland Security tried to end Temporary Protected Status, said the moment he heard Trump’s unfounded claims about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs, he got on the phone.
“I called everybody I knew in the Haitian community and said, ‘You better get money. There’s 350,000 Haitians who can vote in Florida. You better get money from the Democratic National Committee, because those 350,000 votes can certainly tip the election for somebody like Debbie Mucarsel-Powell,” said Kurzban, a member of Immigrants’ List, which has also given money for grassroots get-out-the-vote efforts in the Haitian community.
Kurzban said that while the national Democratic Party has dismissed Florida as a red state, voters can still make a difference.
“They are wrong in thinking those 350,000 people can’t make a difference,” he said. “It may not make a difference to Trump, but it certainly can make a huge difference in winning the senatorial election.”
Harris herself said during an interview last month hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists that Americans “deserve better” than the unfounded rumors about Haitian migrants eating pets.
Still, the daunting silence and lack of money being poured into Creole-language radio and other efforts have left community activists, elected officials and party members trying to offer up their own response with rallies, prayer vigils, voter registration drives and door-knocking efforts to try and counter the attacks.
Haitian-American elected officials have been working to mobilize voters within their communities. These Haitian-American-led efforts have also included national press conferences, op-eds, fundraising and canvassing in battleground states.
Those officials and other community leaders are also partnering with advocacy, civic and various nonprofit organizations, plus other grassroots groups sympathetic to their causes, like immigration, to increase and mobilize voter engagement.
Surin said that his group was preparing to put up billboards next week in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties in an effort to counter the Trump campaign’s attacks.
“We can sit here complaining and crying about what Trump has said, but we have to take proactive action,” he said. Still, Surin added, “the community is still reeling at the fact that the vice president hasn’t said more about this — the mistreatment, the attacks, the fear that people are enduring.”
In a statement to the Miami Herald on Friday night, Nancy Metayer Bowen, the Harris’ campaign’s Caribbean vote director in Florida, said that the vice president’s campaign “has been consistently engaging the Haitian community in South Florida and will continue to highlight the contrast” between Harris and Trump.
“Donald Trump’s lies about Haitian immigrants have threatened the safety of the Haitian community across our nation, and there are millions of voters in Florida and across the country who are looking to turn the page on Trump and his chaos and division,” Metayer Bowen, a Coral Springs city commissioner, said.
Asked to discuss Trump’s outreach to Haitian voters and concerns about his rhetoric, campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said simply: “Temporary Protected Status is by definition a TEMPORARY program. Under the Trump Administration, Haitian ILLEGAL immigrants will be returned to their home country.”
“A lot of missed opportunities”
Haitian Americans make up only a small part of the electorate in South Florida. Between Miami-Dade and Broward counties, just under 70,000 Haitian-born U.S. citizens are registered to vote, according to data analyzed by Daniel Smith, the chairman of the University of Florida’s political science department.
Those voters are overwhelmingly registered as Democrats — about 73% of them, according to Smith’s analysis. Just 4% are registered to vote as Republicans.
Bastien, a prominent community advocate before she became the first Haitian-American woman on the Miami-Dade County Commission, said the Trump campaign’s recent claims about Haitian migrants have been “traumatic” for an already-marginalized community. She said the nonprofit she leads, Family Action Network Movement, has received calls from members of South Florida’s Haitian community in recent weeks, expressing concern for their safety because of Trump’s remarks.
“You can imagine that people are scared,” Bastien said. “We have a community in crisis, we have a community under assault, we have a community that feels under siege.”
Yet Bastien also expressed frustration with national Democrats, who she said have a “complete lack of presence” when it comes to Miami-Dade’s Haitian community. She said that her group, FANM, and others are planning to host a get-out-the-vote rally this month, but added that she hopes Harris’ campaign will begin to invest more resources in the final weeks before the November election.
“They have a lot of missed opportunities,” Bastien said. “They take our votes for granted, and it’s a big mistake.”
Haitian community focused on defeating Trump
Florida, overall, is seen as less competitive in this year’s presidential election. Trump carried the state in both 2016 and 2020, and Republicans have amassed an immense voter-registration advantage over Democrats in recent years, making the state something of a risky investment for Harris’ campaign and national Democratic groups.
But despite the community’s small number of voters, Trump appealed to the community in 2016, telling them during an appearance at the Little Haiti Cultural Center in Miami he was “running to represent Haitian Americans” and wanted “to be your greatest champion.”
Vanessa Joseph, the city clerk of North Miami, which has a significant Haitian community, said that there has been some outreach from Harris’ team and national Democrats. In August, the campaign tapped Metayer Bowen, who is Haitian-American, to lead its voter-engagement efforts in Florida’s Caribbean communities, and Harris’ campaign has also opened up an office in North Miami.
Joseph conceded that more can be done to mobilize Haitian Americans ahead of the election, but said that the recent rhetoric in the presidential race has “reminded folks in the Haitian community of how important it is to be civically engaged, to participate in the political process, to make their voices heard.”
“It’s incredibly important for us to stay mission focused on what needs to be accomplished,” she said. “Absolutely, there should be more intentional investments, but that should not stop us from continuing to do the work that needs to be done to ensure this community is respected.”
State Rep. Dotie Joseph, the Democratic Minority Leader Pro Tempore in the Florida House, said that the Haitian community’s focus, for now, is squarely on defeating Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who has also echoed the false rumors about Springfield and acknowledged last month that he was willing to “create stories” in order to emphasize “the suffering of the American people” caused by large-scale immigration.
Joseph said that while immigrants and Black voters “can take issue with both parties, the imminent threat for Haitian Americans” is Trump.
It’s not the first time that Trump has targeted Haitians. In 2017, he reportedly insisted in a meeting with advisers that Haitians shouldn’t be allowed into the U.S., claiming that “ they all have AIDS.” During a meeting with members of Congress in 2018, he derided Haiti and unspecified African nations as “s--thole countries.”
Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, said that the recent discussion about Haitian migrants fits neatly into that same playbook — a playbook that, at times, has proven effective.
“Trump is going to be Trump,” Jewett said. “This is the way he’s campaigned going all the way back to 2016. He says things that are over the top and inflammatory and often not true, but that seem to really energize and mobilize certain segments of his supporters.”
“The proof that they think it’s effective is that they keep doing it,” Jewett added.
This story has been udpated to include a comment from Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign that was shared with the Herald after publication.
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