Ohio Haitians Feel Panic, Local Christians Try to Repair Divides

On Thursday, Viles Dorsainvil, a former pastor in Haiti and the leader of Haitian Community Help and Support Center in Springfield, Ohio, was getting phone call after phone call from local immigrants feeling “panic” over their safety. The 60,000-person city has felt the strain and culture clash of welcoming 15,000 Haitians over the past four years, most of whom have temporary legal status in the US due to violence in their home country. Those tensions escalated this week as false rumors about Haitians— fanned by former president Donald Trump—came into the national spotlight. Local Ohio church leaders are largely supportive of the Haitian community, which is predominantly Christian, but they are navigating division in their own Christian communities too. Pastors of some of the largest local churches joined meetings, press conferences, and phone calls this week to debunk misconceptions about Haitians and the situation on the ground. Still, social media and the national news cycle (conservative news outlets ran headlines featuring a resident describing Springfield as a “dystopian nightmare”) have been louder locally than church responses, with a feedback loop that has deepened divisions even within the local Christian community. Local pastors, in interviews with CT, said the social fabric...