Where did Trump’s Springfield dog-eating debate claims come from?

At Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Donald Trump repeated the wild, baseless claim that Haitian migrants in an Ohio city are abducting people’s pets and eating them.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame,” Trump said.

The conspiracy theory appears to have bubbled up from racist rhetoric circulating online about the Haitian community in Springfield, which has a population of 58,000.

Haitians have come to the US in large numbers in recent years after a federal immigration program offered humanitarian parole to citizens from the Caribbean nation and three other countries facing economic and societal upheaval. Haiti has been devasted by major earthquakes and gang violence in the past decade.

Haitians appear to have come to Springfield because of job opportunities and affordable living, according to the city.

The pet-eating claim seems to have originated from a post on a Springfield Facebook group. The person who made the post, however, was not an eyewitness to the heinous accusation, but instead relied on a fourth-hand account.

The post, which appeared to have been written in the private group “Springfield Ohio Crime and Information”, read: “Warning to all about our beloved pets & those around us!!! My neighbor informed me that her daughters friend had lost her cat. She checked pages, kennels, asked around, etc.

“One day she came home from work, as soon as she stepped out of her car, looked towards a neighbors house, where Haitians live, & saw her cat hanging from a branch, like you'd do a deer for butchering, & they were carving it