JD Vance Claims Haitian Migrants Are Spreading HIV in Ohio
Local health experts and data refute Vance's claims that HIV rates have surged in Springfield due to migrant Haitians.
JD Vance has repeatedly claimed that Haitian immigrants coming to Springfield, Ohio, are responsible for an alleged rise in the number of HIV transmissions in the metro area.
The U.S. senator from Ohio first made a claim on X on September 10, alongside claims that residents of the city were reporting their pets were being abducted and eaten by Haitian migrants. (He later admitted this assertion may have been a fabrication.)
Vance then lectured the media for not more closely covering the problem of unrestricted immigration to the country.
“Do you know what’s confirmed?” the Republican vice presidential candidate wrote in his post. “That a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here. That local health services have been overwhelmed. That communicable diseases — like TB and HIV — have been on the rise….
“If you’re a reporter, or an activist, who didn’t give a shit about these suffering Americans until yesterday, I have some advice: Spare your outrage for your fellow citizens suffering under Kamala Harris’s policies. Be outraged at yourself for letting this happen.”
Vance linked to a post in which Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris bragged about helping Haitian migrants receive amnesty to remain in the United States.
Later that night, following the debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump, Vance told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that “communicable diseases like HIV and TB have skyrocketed” in Springfield, attributing the cause of the alleged rise in disease rates to Democrats’ failure to halt illegal immigration.
He repeated the claim on CBS’s Face the Nation a few days later, again blaming Harris for failing to do anything to prevent unchecked immigration.
“Thanks to her open border, there is a rise in HIV cases in Springfield, Ohio,” Vance said.
Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, a Republican, told reporters that he only knew of an “overall” strain on the area’s health care services — as well as the cost of hiring Creole translators for service agencies — due to an influx of Haitian migrants who had been granted temporary protected status.
Data from the Ohio Department of Health and Clark County Combined Health District — which includes Springfield — shows that Clark County reported 10 new HIV infections in 2018, six in 2019, six in 2020, 12 in 2021, and 13 in 2022 — proving that there has not been a massive spike in HIV rates in recent years.
The most recent data on tuberculosis infection rates shows that, over the period from 2018 to 2022, the total number of tuberculosis cases in all of Clark County has ranged from a low of zero cases in 2018 to a high of three cases in 2021, with only two cases reported in 2022, the last year for which data is available.
Clark County Combined Health District Commissioner Chris Cook told NBC News that Vance’s claim of a surge in communicable diseases in Springfield and its surrounding suburbs and exurbs is inaccuate.
“Overall, we have not seen a substantial increase in all reportable communicable diseases,” Cook said. “In fact, if you look at all reportable communicable diseases together (minus COVID) for the year ending 2023 you will see that we are at our lowest rate in Clark County since 2016.”
Ohio Health Department Director Bruce Vanderhoff told The Columbus Dispatch that the state isn’t seeing a “measurable or discernible increase” in vaccine-preventable illnesses, but wants to ensure new residents get vaccinated to prevent outbreaks.
Vance seems unconcerned whether his claims are true. During his CBS interview, when host Margaret Brennan pushed back on his claims, Vance sidestepped the question and pivoted to attack the national media for not more fully investigating strains that large influxes of migrants place on local infrastructure.
While condemning threats of violence against migrants and those who work with them, Vance claimed that the more important issue should be the Biden-Haris administration’s failure to prevent an influx of migrants into the country.
“Look, I talk to a lot of people in Springfield,” he said. “People are frustrated with the national media attention. Some people are also grateful that, finally, someone is paying attention to what’s going on. You’re never going to get this stuff perfect, Margaret.”
He continued to bash the media for pointing out factual inaccuracies of the claims around Haitian migrants.
“My point here is that the American media ignores these stories,” he added. “Everybody who has dealt with a large influx of migration knows that sometimes there are cultural practices that seem very far out there to a lot of Americans. Are we not allowed to talk about this in the United States of America, Margaret, because the American media is more interested in fact checking innocent people who are begging for relief than they are in investigating some of these claims?”
In a later interview with Dana Bash on CNN’s State of the Union, Vance went further, defending the dissemination of the pet-eating claims, regardless of their accuracy or veracity, and suggesting that making false claims is justified if it gains attention for a certain issue or narrative.
“The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes, if I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” he said.
Vance was not directly challenged on his claims regarding rising rates of communicable diseases, but his shameful willingness to play loose with the truth around pet-eating to gain attention should not leave a neutral observer with confidence that his claims of spiking HIV rates have any basis in truth.
As the magazine Them notes, it’s ironic that while Trump’s campaign is pushing a narrative of rising HIV rates, it was the policies enacted by Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, during his time as governor of Indiana, that led to one of the worst HIV outbreaks in the Midwest in recent years.
Pence initially refused to allow clean needle exchanges, which critics claimed worsened the HIV epidemic among communities with high rates of intravenous drug use. He later signed a bill setting up limited needle exchange programs in areas most affected by the epidemic.
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