Springfield Bomb Threats Coming From Overseas Bots: Mayor

The mayor of Springfield, Ohio — the quiet Midwestern city thrust into the national spotlight over claims members of its Haitian immigrant population were eating cats and dogs — told Newsweek that he does not see either presidential candidate offering a fix to the country’s broken immigration system.

Rob Rue, a Republican, said he had spent the past week consumed by a flood of unfounded claims of migrants “eating the pets” started by former president Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, which obscured the real difficulties of the city’s dramatic population increase.

Then more than 33 bomb threats arrived over the past five days, aimed at the city hall, healthcare facilities, schools and colleges. All were determined to have been hoaxes and many were from overseas, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said Monday.

“We think it’s a program like a swatting method that they have come from similar sources, with similar language, and they definitely are a threat and definitely something we’re looking into and not ignoring whatsoever, but each one’s determined to be a hoax, according to the governor,” Mayor Rue added in an interview Tuesday.

Gov. DeWine announced that state troopers would be providing additional security at each of the city school district’s 18 buildings. Officers began proactively sweeping those sites for threats Tuesday morning, to make sure staff and student are safe. DeWine said this protocol would continue for the foreseeable future.

“None of the threats that have come in to Springfield to date have been legitimate,” the governor said in a press release. “We’re doing this purely as a precaution to prevent further disruption within the Springfield City School District.”

Migration has led to Springfield’s rapid growth

While the threats appeared to come after the claims of cats and dogs being eaten, which leaders have repeatedly denied are true, the city has faced very real issues as its population suddenly grew, the mayor said.

An official city count suggests between 12,000 and 15,000 people have arrived in recent years, with the mayor telling Newsweek that there could be more.

That meant the city grew between 20-25 percent, putting pressure on emergency, health and education services, when its budget was for a population between 58,000 to 60,000 people.

Issues that many other communities face around homelessness, rising housing costs and unemployment are also still present, Rue said.

“This national spotlight, this bright light that has called us to almost blur some of the things that we can’t pay attention to because of having to answer and having to tell the world who we really are, not just what we’ve been told we are,” the mayor added.

“We are a community that needs help and not hate from those that are taking the national stage.”

Some of those national voices have included Donald Trump, who was fact-checked during the presidential debate last Tuesday when he made the claims, but repeated them throughout the week.

His running mate, Sen. JD Vance, has also defended his remarks on social media about Springfield, telling CNN’s Dana Bash that he and Trump had to “create stories” to highlight the issue of immigration.

“All I’ll say is that our representative senator, who’s been saying things about Springfield, I wish he would rip a page out of Governor Mike DeWine’s playbook and actually believe the local leadership that is telling the truth,” Rue said.

Part of the state response to Springfield’s migrant influx includes $2.5 million in funding for the city to address public health concerns, with many in the migrant community facing language and cultural barriers when it comes to accessing services and taking up offers of vaccines.

Rue said he was very grateful for the governor’s support, but when asked what financial help the city had received from the federal government, the mayor said there had been “none.”

Springfield mayor calls for immigration policy changes

The pet-eating and other unfounded claims have glossed over some very real struggles the city of Springfield has faced, including escalating pressure on local services.

Springfield, through no fault of its own, has become something of a case-study on election-year misinformation, used by Trump, Vance and the GOP more widely to shore up their claims that the Biden administration’s border policies do not work.

“I don’t see a fix in November,” Rue told Newsweek. “I’ve probably not said that before, but I don’t see a fix for us.”

The mayor said the country was “dizzy from pendulum politics,” with neither Republicans nor Democrats appearing to offer a way forward to actually address the issues felt by cities like his.

“It’s either build a wall or have a completely porous southern border and there’s nothing in the middle that helps that,” Rue said.

As the focus remained on Springfield Tuesday, with continuing threats that have forced the two local colleges to go remote for the week, the mayor explained that, while there were some residents who were clearly frustrated with the influx of migrants, many others had come out in support of their new neighbors and wanted to embrace them.

“When we’re forgotten in a week or two, as far as with these issues, and it does move on, we’ll be left with the clean-up of what’s been said about our community,” Rue added.

“We need to be seen as a community that will move forward together, we’re a community that will work together to solve these things.”