Months after the Trump campaign’s flagrant lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, went viral, right-wing media continue to fuel fear of Haitian migration. In Indiana, a small city was the focus of a misinformation-fueled migrant witch hunt led by right-wing media that emboldened hate groups and is now being used as a case study to justify anti-immigrant policies.

Logansport is a rural city with a population of about 18,000 residents. In mid-September, Kayla Blakeslee, a right-wing talk radio host based out of Fort Wayne, Indiana, posted on Facebook screenshots of emails that claimed “20,000 plus Haitian immigrants” were “dropped off” in Logansport over the last six months. Blakeslee wrote, “Is Logansport, IN the new Springfield, OH???”

Blakeslee’s factually inaccurate post — the mayor said the numbers originated from a social media satire page — was the first snowball in an avalanche of misinformation and hate that spread about Haitian migrants in Logansport. 

Logansport's mayor acknowledged that there is an increased immigrant population, but noted that the community has been diverse for “a very long time.” According to census data, Logansport has about a 30 percent Latino population. 

Story spreads through the right-wing ecosystem

Central Indiana’s Fox affiliate picked up the story on October 10, with the headline “Logansport officials say immigrant population growth is unsustainable.” 

The report pointed to “strain on schools,” first quoting a county health department administrator who said she didn’t “think our school system can sustain what they are doing right now.” The district’s superintendent, the actual authority on the district’s capacity to handle new immigrant students, was optimistic, saying, “We can handle it.” 

The report also pointed to strain on a local hospital because of increased births and emergency room visits, but the hospital responded by issuing a statement pointing in part to shuttered obstetrics departments at other area hospitals as a cause of increased births at Logansport Memorial Hospital.

Right-wing X account Libs of TikTok quickly shared the accompanying video segment.

A slew of other right-wing X accounts then amplified the story, including RNC Research and Jack Posobiec.

The day after the Fox affiliate’s report came out, Indiana’s now-newly elected lieutenant governor, Micah Beckwith, posted false claims about Logansport’s migrant population, including a conspiracy theory that a “money trail” was responsible for “DUMPING double a town’s population in unassimilated migrants.” Beckwith also cited Blakeslee’s coverage of the story.

On October 14, Breitbart published a story about Haitians in Logansport, claiming that the town has been “targeted by the Biden regime” and that “Biden has dumped thousands of Haitians there.” 

On October 16, Fox News’ Fox & Friends hosted a segment about Logansport’s “migrant influx” and The New York Post spotlighted the segment in a separate report. 

The following day, Blakeslee interviewed Beckwith, who described the increased Haitian population as “an invasion” and argued that Logansport officials should deport legal Haitian immigrants. 

Newsmax aired a segment about Logansport’s “immigrant influx” on October 19. 

Education quickly became the focal point of the manufactured migrant crisis, even though the district’s superintendent stated that the system can handle the additional students. 

The New York Post published two pieces attacking migrant students in Logansport, claiming in an editorial that migrants are “robbing Logansport kids of an education” and in a news report that “kids are being pushed out of schools.”  

On the same day, the Daily Mail published a piece about the “tiny Midwestern town where ‘explosion’ of Haitian migrants is overwhelming schools,” writing that “locals … say students are being muscled out of public schools by an influx of thousands of foreign newcomers.” The Daily Mail quoted a retired teacher, who said that “the native born are now a minority in the local school system.” 

The next day, Fox News’ America Reports hosted a segment about Logansport, which Libs of TikTok later posted on X. 

Hate groups take advantage

On October 23, Logansport’s local newspaper, the Pharos-Tribune, reported that stickers recruiting for white nationalist hate group Patriot Front were found in the city. 

Around the same time, at least one Logansport resident received a flyer from the “Trinity White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan” reading “3RD WORLD IMMIGRANTS BRING 3RD WORLD CONSEQUENCES.” 

Springfield residents faced a similar situation when hate groups swarmed the city after false claims about Haitian immigrants there went viral.

Indiana’s AG calls for investigation, and the Heritage Foundation uses Logansport to support anti-immigrant policies 

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita responded by launching an investigation into the local health department, school system, and a Tysons Food plant (Logansport’s largest employer), seeking information about supposed human trafficking and other issues.

Rokita said the investigation is “focused on the coordinated efforts among international and local nonprofit ‘refugee resettlement’ organizations and employers, like Tyson Foods, to bring large numbers of migrants to Indiana.” 

On November 19, the Heritage Foundation published commentary about Logansport, using the city to claim rural American towns are struggling due to an influx of immigrants.

Heritage proposed that Indiana and other states should “pass legislation prohibiting business licenses for organizations involved in facilitating illegal migration” and “prohibit the use of any state and local taxes from funding immigration [lawyers] and NGOs providing legal representation for aliens.”

President-elect Donald Trump has been emboldened by anti-migrant misinformation, threatening mass deportation and promising to end Temporary Protective Status, a program that allows people from select countries, including Haiti, to live and work in the United States. Ending TPS would likely force family separations and negatively impact communities, like Logansport, where TPS holders have lived and been employed for years.