Indian-American attorney representing Haitians seeks Trump-Vance arrest for Springfield unrest – Times of India

WASHINGTON: A prominent Indian-American attorney‘s law firm representing a Haitian community group in Ohio has filed a criminal complaint against Donald Trump and JD Vance seeking their arrest for provoking chaos, threats, and unrest in Springfield with false charges that immigrants are eating pets of residents.
Under an Ohio statute that allows private citizens to file criminal charges, the Cleveland-based Chandra Law Firm hired by the Haitian Bridge Alliance charged Trump and Vance with false alarms, telecommunications harassment, aggravated menacing and complicity, while asking the local court to affirm there is probable cause and issue warrants against the MAGA duo.
“If it were anyone else other than Trump and Vance who had done what they’ve done — wreak havoc on Springfield, resulting in bomb threats, evacuated and closed government buildings and schools, threats to the mayor and his family, they would have been arrested by now. They are not above the law,” the firm’s founder Subodh Chandra told TNN.
Chandra, a former federal prosecutor who has handled several high-profile cases including the police-shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by Cleveland police, said he was fighting the case pro bono after inaction by the local prosecutor despite Trump-Vance claims about pet-eating Haitians being refuted the Ohio Governor and Springfield Mayor, both Republicans.
Chandra is closely allied with the Democratic Party but he said his personal political affiliation had nothing to do with taking up the case. “Trump and Vance must be held accountable to the rule of law in the same way any of the rest of us would be,” he said, outlining the distress they had caused Springfield residents, including Haitian immigrants, many of whom came there at the invitation of city businesses to take up jobs locals would not.
The Trump-Vance allegations of Haitian refugees eating dogs and cats now stands discredited following the discovery that the woman who first reported her cat (Sassy) missing and suspected her Haitian neighbors of taking it, later finding Sassy hiding in her own basement. She subsequently apologized to the neighbors, but by then MAGA activists, seizing on other unrelated events, had transported the vile “Haitians eating pets” narrative into the Trump campaign.
Despite city officials debunking the rumors, Trump and Vance doubled down on the canard to vilify Haitians, vastly inflating their numbers in Springfield and accusing them of various crimes. In a rambling press conference in Los Angeles last week, Trump said “I actually heard today it’s 32,000” Haitians in Springfield, while threatening, mistakenly, to deport them to Venezuela.
Ignoring the charges of denigrating Haitians and causing unrest and threats to their lives in Springfield, the Trump campaign, responding to the criminal campaign, asserted that Trump and Vance are “rightfully highlighting” Kamala Harris’s “failed immigration system,” which has allowed “thousands of illegal immigrants” into communities like Springfield and many others across the country.
According to city estimates, there are 10000-12000 Haitians in Clark county which includes Springfield. While many are legal immigrants, others were granted temporary protective status (TPS) under a US law that was enacted in 1990 during the Presidency of George Bush sr to shelter victims of extreme natural calamities and civil war. Haiti is one of 16 countries eligible for TPS, a list that includes Afghanistan, Burma, and Nepal from the subcontinent.
The US has granted TPS to 800,000 refugees going back to 1990, with the Haitian influx starting with the devastating earthquake in 2010 and subsequent civil conflicts.