Turmoil erupts in Pennsylvania town after Trump spreads false claims about Haitians there

The borough manager said Haitian immigrants are "not a burden" on Charleroi, despite Donald Trump's insinuations.

When Joe Manning got to work on Wednesday, he sat down and penned an email to a city manager 220 miles away in Springfield, Ohio.

It was the day after the presidential debate in Philadelphia, where former President Donald Trump propagated the repeatedly debunked and incendiary false claim that Haitian migrants in Springfield were eating the town’s pets.

As the borough manager of Charleroi — a small Pennsylvania town about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh — Manning is all too familiar with those types of xenophobic allegations, as similar claims have circulated around his borough. While Springfield’s city manager, Bryan Heck, is dealing with false theories about “people eating domesticated pets,” Manning said in Charleroi, there are baseless claims such as “people on Facebook saying that there’s a government-funded tent city in the Rite Aid parking lot, that there’s people walking down the street carrying live chickens.”

He told Heck in Springfield: “I empathize with you.”

A day later, Trump set his sights on Charleroi.

More than 2,000 miles away from the sleepy Pennsylvania town during a rally in Tucson, Ariz., Thursday, Trump promoted inflammatory rhetoric about Haitian migrants in Charleroi on the national stage, promoting the misleading claim that the Washington County borough’s Haitian immigrant population was costing local taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. He also suggested the town is “virtually bankrupt” and that the immigrants are bringing an increase of crime, neither of which are true. The borough’s crime rate is down, Manning said.

“[Charleroi] experienced a 2,000% increase in the population of Haitian migrants under Kamala Harris. So Pennsylvania, remember this when you have to go to vote ... just remember this 2,000% increase,” Trump said in Tucson. “It’s a small town. All of a sudden they got thousands of people. The schools are scrambling to hire translators for the influx of students who don’t speak not a word of English, costing local taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Trump’s invocation of the Pennsylvania borough is the latest example in a slew of fearmongering claims the former president has made about immigrant communities across the country, as he and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, continue to attack Vice President Kamala Harris on immigration and the border.

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The rhetoric about Springfield has fueled real-life consequences, leading to bomb threats to its city hall and schools.

And on Friday, President Joe Biden condemned Trump’s statements, saying, “It is simply wrong that the proud Haitian community is under attack right now in this country.”

“There’s no place in America. This has to stop — what he’s doing. It has to stop.”

Haitian immigrants are ‘not a burden’ on Charleroi government, city manager says

The total immigrant population in the glassmaking town of Charleroi has increased by 2,000% in the last two years, CBS News Pittsburgh reported in March. That figure is relative, Manning said, given the borough’s small population. In 2022, there were 4,324 people living in Charleroi, according to the latest census estimates, and in 2020, Charleroi’s population of foreign-born individuals was just under 3%.

Haitian refugees have legally come to Charleroi for a number of reasons, including to escape violence and political unrest in their home country — drawn to the borough on the Monongahela River for its affordable housing and meatpacking jobs, the local Observer-Reporter reported in June 2021.

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“Their goal is to leave the country because of fear of what is happening, the political problems, the economic problems,” Getro Bernabe, who was born in Haiti and now works as an immigrant liaison in the region, told the Literary Council of Southwestern Pennsylvania in 2023. “They don’t feel like they are safe living in Haiti. Even if they love Haiti, it is just not safe for families to live there.”

Many of the Haitian migrants enrolled in classes to learn English, according to the Observer-Reporter.

As of March 2024, the majority of English Language Learners (ELLs) at the Charleroi Area School District were from Haiti. The district hired more ELL teachers, an ELL coach for the teachers, and an interpreter that cost over $400,000.

But Charleroi Area School District Superintendent Ed Zelich said the couple hundred immigrant students moving into the school district are “not necessarily” costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars as Trump claimed.

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“We have that in place. We have teachers in place,” Zelich said Friday. “There was a language barrier at first for the younger students when they come, but it’s not insurmountable … I just want to say there’s a cost associated with all parts of education, but these students are blending into classrooms.”

The district, Zelich said, gets reimbursed by the state. As enrollment increases, so does the reimbursement and funding from the state Department of Education, Zelich said.

“I have a duty, and my duty is to ensure a high-quality education with a safe and inclusive learning environment. That’s what I strive to do each day, and that’s what I ensure that our team does each day,” Zelich said.

Over the summer, the school district also received a grant to certify some teachers in ELL, said Taylor Brown, a reporter at the Mon Valley Independent who has covered the area for about seven years.

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Manning emphasized that the Haitian community is an “easily observable reality” in Charleroi — a town which in 2022 was 77% white, 10% Black, and 3% Latino — but that the new residents are “not the burden on the local government or any of our resources or anything that’s being portrayed.”

“It’s no different than, you know, people moved to here from Tucson, Ariz., you’d have to deal with it,” Manning said.

In an effort to welcome the growing immigrant community in Washington County and other neighboring areas, the Mon Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce hired Bernabe a former officer with the Haitian Coast Guard, as a liaison. Bernabe is helping immigrants with navigating the day-to-day including assistance with documentation, answering questions, and serving as a point of contact and interpreter.

”It’s cheaper than living in a big city,” Bernabe told the literary council. “If you like a quiet place, you might be able to love it here.”

Others said they felt Trump’s comments were being used to stoke fears after the region’s recent economic struggles.

The Mon Valley Alliance, an industrial, business, and community development organization, said in a statement that the struggles of Charleroi — including the closure of the town’s Corning Glass plant and Quality Pasta facility, leading to the elimination of around 380 jobs — are being exploited by the former president for political gain. The organization added that the borough’s “legacy as a hub for glassmaking is at risk, and the community is in dire need of support — support to revitalize its industries and create new job opportunities, not to address a so-called ‘Haitian problem’” when many Haitian immigrants are also contributing to the town’s economy.

“What the hell do the people in Tucson, Arizona care about what goes on in Charleroi, Pennsylvania?” Manning said. “I mean, you’re just trying to stir up hysteria … it’s not the problem that everybody seems to want to make it into.”

Online ‘vitriol’ and resident anxieties

Manning doesn’t pay attention to the “vitriol” on Facebook, but he is constantly reminded of anxieties from residents. Manning received a call Friday from a woman in a neighboring community who brings her daughter to religious classes at the local Catholic church.

She asked Manning about whether it was safe to come into the borough, he said. He reassured her it was safe and cited the decreased crime rate in the borough.

Disparaging statements about Haitian immigrants have been circulated online by conservative media outlets, the Washington County Republican Party, and conservative politicians including Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick and Charleroi Council member Larry Celaschi.

In Facebook comment sections, users urge each other to take photos around town and send them to conservative media outlets. One commenter wrote: “Import the 3rd World become the 3rd World.”

A year and a half ago, Brown, the reporter, said the borough celebrated Haitian Flag Day, and while many community members came together to eat, play music, dance, and partake in Haitian culture, other residents drove past the event upset and confused why American culture wasn’t being celebrated.

“I truly think these [immigrant] families are trying to start over, and I know there are a lot of questions that come with that — how it happened, why it happened — but they want the best for themselves, and I think there are a lot of people in the community that also support that,” Brown said.

As of Friday, Manning said there hadn’t been any reported threats to Charleroi’s immigrant community, buildings, or employees.

“I haven’t seen anything like that here so far,” Manning said. “And I hope it stays that way.”

Staff writer Aseem Shukla contributed to this article.