Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance has admitted making up the story that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Ohio, justifying the story as necessary to push Donald Trump’s agenda.
Is Michiana now having its own such moment?
On Tuesday U.S. Representative Rudy Yakym, the Granger Republican who represents Michiana, sent Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas a letter. In it, Yakym talks about a “crisis” happening in Logansport, a city of 18,000 that’s in Cass County, outside of his district.
In his letter, Yakym says he’s alarmed by “thousands of migrants from Haiti and other countries, which is overwhelming Logansport’s infrastructure,” and “a surge in infectious diseases like HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis…” Also, Yakym says the school system can’t keep up with the demands of non-English speaking students, and there’s an acute housing shortage.
It’s unclear where Yakym got his information, which he attributes in the letter to “local officials.”
Many of the immigrants work in two large pork processing plants. Yakym’s opponent this election, Democrat Lori Camp, says if she were elected she would work to help communities acquire the resources needed to welcome legal immigrants.
"It's the MAGA battle cry," Camp said. "Hate immigrants. We've heard Trump say he's going to round them up, whether they're legal or illegal, and so Rudy is just jumping on that bandwagon. It's beneath what we should be as a Hoosier."
Yakym declined WVPE’s interview request.
Logansport Mayor Chris Martin, a Republican, initially agreed to be interviewed by WVPE Thursday but then backed out. No one at the Cass County Health Department would return WVPE’s calls or provide disease statistics.
The New York Post, the tabloid owned by Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., ran a story about Logansport Monday. It quoted Mayor Martin saying, “Simply put: Stop playing politics with the smaller communities. We don’t like this.”
