J.D. Vance Is Spreading HIV Misinformation As Haitians Grapple With Fallout of False Trump Claims
When Kyle Scott heard former President Donald Trump mention his town during the first and likely only debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, the feeling was not the joy of being acknowledged on a platform being watched by a reported 67 million viewers. He feared how the fallout would impact his neighbors and friends. I instantly became worried because I knew that it was like a dog whistle,” he tells Queer Kentucky, “and it appealed to some of the worst instincts and some of the worst people.”
During the debate, Trump spread a false conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants were “eating dogs” and “eating the cats” of Springfield, Ohio residents following the disappearance of a local cat, who was later found in its owner’s basement unharmed. After the Republican nominee parroted these bogus claims, at least 35 threats of violence have targeted the small Ohio town. Elementary school students had to be evacuated from their classrooms following bomb threats, and college campuses were shut down after a mysterious package was discovered at Wittenberg University. State troopers are now standing guard outside local schools to prevent children from being targeted by mass shooters, and security cameras have been placed throughout the city.
Scott, who serves as the vice president of Equality Springfield, says the town of 60,000 has never experienced anything like this before. Emergency hotlines have been flooded with 911 calls, and the day that he spoke, three stores were shuttered after experiencing bomb threats. That’s why he says that it was important for the organization to fight back against the hate aimed at their community: Equality Springfield released a joint statement with GLAAD on September 18 condemning “dangerous and baseless claims” scapegoating marginalized groups.
“It’s not helpful to anyone, and it loses the point,” Scott says. “If you do want to discuss strains on resources or assistance from the federal government to help with migrant or immigrant populations, that’s a whole different conversation than demonizing an entire group of people based upon lies. It’s very disappointing, and it’s very discouraging.”
In GLAAD and Equality Springfield’s statement, the groups took particular exception to allegations from Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance also blaming Haitian immigrants for allegedly fueling a surge in HIV/AIDS cases locally. Speaking with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins after the debate, Vance doubled down on his running mate’s rhetoric by claiming that “communicable diseases like HIV and TB have skyrocketed in this small Ohio town.” “This is what Kamala Harris’ border policies have done,” the Ohio senator affirmed, despite the fact that the vast majority of Haitian immigrants came to the U.S. lawfully through the federal Temporary Protected Status program.
Local health authorities have affirmed that Vance’s allegations are untrue. Health records for Clark County indicate that HIV transmissions actually declined between 2022 and 2023, and the county’s health commissioner, Chris Cook, told ABC News that new cases of HIV in 2024 are “tracking similar to last year.” Although he has yet to recant, Vance has openly admitted that the Republican ticket’s intention is to “create stories,” even if they are inaccurate, to gain media attention.
Advocacy groups and health care organizations serving Ohio and northern Kentucky are concerned that Vance’s statements, while untrue, may further fuel the everyday discrimination that people living with HIV too often face in their communities. Linda Seiter, CEO of the Cincinnati-based HIV/AIDS services organization Caracole, says the kind of rhetoric that Vance is pushing “causes people to go back into the closet in terms of their status” by creating more shame.
“It’s so dangerous on so many levels,” she tells Queer Kentucky. “First, it isn’t true. Secondly, it really speaks to the stigma that still exists with HIV and the blame. I worry that people are going to be hurt because of it and that the Haitian community will be even more ostracized or looked at with fear or contempt.”
For many of the clients that Caracole works with, Seiter says that the organization already witnesses the extremely harmful and negative impact of stigma on the lives of people living with HIV. Many of the clients it regularly serves aren’t open about their status, meaning that their case manager is the only person in their life who is aware that they are HIV positive. She says that Caracole has watched patients “get needlessly ill” after intentionally putting off testing or treatment. Even though HIV is now a manageable condition with proper medication, it’s not uncommon for clients to tell clinicians: “I knew I was positive 10 years ago. I was too ashamed to get care.”
It doesn’t help, Seiter says, that Ohio still has a felonious assault law on the books that discourages people from knowing their status. Currently under Ohio statutes, transmission of HIV without previously disclosing one’s status is a crime punishable by up to 12 years in prison, as well as a $15,000 fine. Violators of the law are also forced to register as sex offenders.
“All these things just pile on people and add to the unnecessary shame of stigma,” she says, before issuing a direct message to Vance: “Pay attention to the facts. Support public health. Don’t use HIV as a fear factor.”
For Shameka Parrish-Wright, executive director of VOCAL-KY, Vance’s comments hearken back to the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, in which the U.S. Coast Guard forced Haitian refugees into the Guantanamo Bay detention camp following the passage of a 1987 law barring people with HIV from immigrating to the country. In all, more than 10,000 people were held at Camp Bulkeley under the discriminatory policy, making it the world’s first detention center for HIV-positive individuals. Despite hunger strikes over inhumane conditions at the facility, the mistreatment of Haitian migrants continued from 1991 all the way until 1994.
Parrish-Wright grew up watching the impact of that discrimination, seeing people with HIV die from lack of resources and health care, as well as the sharing of dirty needles. But advocates have made tremendous progress in the years since: Parrish-Wright notes that activists in Kentucky are pushing legislation that would reduce the state’s law criminalizing HIV transmission from a felony to a misdemeanor, and VOCAL-KY works to distribute testing kits across the state. “It used to be a crime to test on your own,” she tells Queer Kentucky. “You had to go through a health center or clinic.”
But marginalized groups, Parrish-Wright adds, worry that Vance’s rhetoric might work to undo those advances. Nationwide data shows that hate crimes increased to an all-time high in 2023, and local communities are on red alert as they fear a spike in violence following these attacks. She holds out hope that Vance can still backtrack on his remarks to alleviate the stressors that Haitian-Americans and people living with HIV are already facing.
“It is never too late to learn,” she says. “It is never too late to get more education. He needs to be talking with the experts and with directly impacted people. He needs to make sure not to further victimize the Haitian community with this negative rhetoric. There’s no justification for the way that he has named Haitian migrants as a number-one enemy. That is a very bad precedent.”
