Two Springfield schools were evacuated Friday after the Ohio city was besieged with threats over the Haitian immigrant debacle.
Students at Perrin Woods Elementary School and Snowhill Elementary School were forced to leave the building Friday morning and moved to an “alternate district location,” according to the Springfield City School District.
Students are now being returned to the care of their parents, Columbus’s Office reported.
The schools were evacuated after police received information. It is currently unknown what information the police received that caused the alarm.
Several other schools have also been evacuated since yesterday and this comes after the city received criticism over claims that Haitian immigrants are eating cats.
It is unclear whether the threats against schools have any connection to the city’s heated debate over immigrants.
Students at Perrin Woods Elementary School and Snowhill Elementary School (pictured) were forced to leave the building Friday morning and moved to an “alternate district location,” according to the Springfield City School District.
Students are being returned to the care of their parents. Schools were evacuated after police received information. It is currently unknown what information the police received that caused such an alarm.
Yesterday, Fulton Elementary School was evacuated and Roosevelt Middle School was placed on lockdown before the school day started due to the same reports that closed Perrin Woods and Snowhill, according to The Dispatch.
However, no other schools have received threats, according to the district.
City Hall was evacuated after several city facilities received bomb threats, The Dispatch reported. All Clark County buildings were also placed on lockdown as a “precaution.”
The bomb threat, obtained by USA Today, was emailed to multiple agencies around 8:30 a.m. Thursday saying a bomb would detonate inside the building within hours and referenced dispelled rumors about Haitian immigrants.
“My hometown of Springfield is turning into a third world (expletive) because they allowed the federal government to dump these (expletive) here,” the email read.
“We have Haitians eating our animals and then you lie and claim this isn’t happening when we see it happening. I’m here to send a message: I placed a bomb in the following places…”
The city of Springfield has been a flashpoint in the immigration debate since large numbers of Haitian immigrants arrived in the city in 2020 to fill vacant jobs.
A Springfield resident (pictured) claimed Haitian immigrants were decapitating ducks in public parks and eating them.
Haitians, who were already in the country legally, moved to the city and were willing to do the manual labor that the locals were not enthusiastic about.
Within a few years, 20,000 immigrants arrived, swelling Springfield’s population, which was just 58,000 in 2020.
Haitians had Social Security numbers and work permits, paid taxes and lived in houses that sat empty and boarded up as the city shrank.
The immigrants are there legally and are eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status, according to an Immigration FAQ page on the city’s website, which says the total immigrant population in Clark County is about 12,000 to 15,000.
Erika Lee, 35, circulated the rumor that migrants were eating cats on Facebook, and the post eventually reached Donald Trump’s campaign.
Lee admitted to NewsGuard that she heard the rumor that Haitian immigrants were eating cats in her town from her neighbor Kimberly Newton, who heard it from a friend, who heard it from the cat’s alleged owner.
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