The deep truth on JD Vance is spoken by Noah Smith here: “I will never forget the "Haitians eating cats" lie. I will never let it go. It was so deliberate and monstrous and unprovoked and cruel, and no one has ever apologized for it…. JD Vance even admitted that they lied. What a barbarous act…” <https://x.com/Noahpinion/status/1999547802448441817>

Lyz Lenz is reporting from Springfield, Ohio during the final days of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants.

She sees a town that is on the one hand braced for ICE raids. She sees another town that is morally hollow, scapegoating Haitian immigrants for local economic decline. But when the immigrants who revived the town are gone, their places will not be filled by people of whom they and JD Vance approve. Rather, the underlying poverty of Springfield will remain. The other residents will then simply need to be ginned up to find a new group of people to hate, and blame:

CROSSPOST: Lyz Lenz: Who Will You Blame When They’re Gone?

<https://www.patreon.com/LyzLenz/posts/who-will-you-165124611> <https://www.patreon.com/LyzLenz>

Men Yell at Me

Wed July 29, 2026

I did not intend to come to Springfield, Ohio, the week that temporary protected status (TPS) ended for Haitian immigrants. Since the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration could revoke TPS for Syrian and Haitian immigrants, the exact deadline has seemed uncertain. A game of kick the can with thousands of lives and livelihoods at stake, their ripple effects broad and uncertain.

This week just happened to be the week that I had childcare. That’s no small thing when you are a single mom in the summer. On Friday, as I packed to leave, the TPS deadline for Haitians and Syrians in the US was extended again, this time to Monday. But a friend who works as an immigration reporter for a national outlet told me she didn’t think there would be another extension. I had initially planned three research stops for my book during the week. I moved things around to leave earlier, realizing I might get only this one stop.

More than one person in Springfield has told me I picked a terrible week to talk to them. The volunteers who run the food banks, passport services, and legal aid are all on a knife’s edge, waiting for ICE to come. When one woman found out that I had spent a week reporting in Minneapolis after the murder of Renée Good, and that I did a ride-along with a person who followed ICE vehicles, she asked me what to look for, where to go. Have I seen a raid? What did it look like? She wanted to be ready.

Springfield is a small city of 58,000 people. They can tell when someone is new, and I have been clocked as a journalist by more than one waitress. Among the residents are an estimated 12,000 to 20,000 Haitian immigrants. There are also immigrants from other countries, many undocumented. Some immigrants have already self-deported, but certainly not all. Further departures would hollow out this town, which, like so many cities in the Middle West, is trying to bounce back from a faded, rundown past. And Springfield was on its way back because of the economic boom from immigrants.

It’s quiet here. Downtown, there is the occasional camera with a somber-looking journalist talking into it. Most are local; I’ve seen two nationals. One was right outside the restaurant I went to on Monday night. I asked about it when I walked in, and the waitress quipped, “The rest of the big guys will show up when there’s blood.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was a journalist, too.

Everyone I talk to is anxious. One organizer won’t leave her home. Another man, an immigrant, who was giving interviews to the media on Monday, the last day of TPS, got nervous as a guy in a red polo walked around the city block where we stood. Red polo walked around the block four times. “We should leave,” I said. We did.

I don’t know if red polo was a threat. But everything feels like a threat in a town that is waiting to be invaded.

Today, as I spoke with volunteers at a St. Vincent de Paul, they conscripted me into packing boxes of necessities for the people who come to the food pantry. There were a lot of people there on Tuesday, which made everyone nervous, because what if ICE came? And so many other what-ifs. As we talked, I asked about a town hall event that had been held just days before I arrived, where members of the community aired their grievances about what they saw as the “special treatment” the immigrants had received. The handouts and the help. The title of the piece for the Dayton Daily News was, “Why can’t we do for our own, too?”

It’s a fair question. Shouldn’t our country provide a safety net for all people? One that provides affordable healthcare, childcare, and job training to everyone? Or else what are our taxes for? (Ah! Well. Nevertheless,)

The people in that article called themselves “heritage citizens,” which is a euphemism for entitlement. Because who is really a heritage citizen on land that is stolen? Who is a heritage citizen when we are all immigrants here? How far back do you have to trace your ancestors here to be a “heritage” citizen? Or is it just about being white?

The women packing boxes with me told me that the food pantry was, of course, for everyone; they had plenty of white families grateful for their services. They acknowledged that yes, the Haitian immigrant community was a primary target for others in town whom they called “the haters” (not “heritage citizens”) who felt they should be doing better economically.

One woman sighed and said, “But who will they blame when they’re gone?”

Other people of color? Women? Drug addicts? They’ll find someone. Any group of people; never the root cause of the poverty problem.

It’s not just poor white people looking for scapegoats. Everyone scapegoats their problems. Centrist Dems blame leftists. Leftists blame special interest money. Everyone scapegoats trans people. Everyone would rather look for a solution within their control rather than realize that they are the victims of a capitalist system designed to grind our bones down and make it into bread.

Individual communities cannot stop Trump’s cruel mass deportations, no matter how people rally and support their neighbors. This doesn’t mean anyone should stop trying. But in the end, Springfield, which has become a talking point for the administration, will face a reckoning. Once so many homes are empty, jobs are unfilled, there is no one to rent to or sell to, and taxes are unpaid — who will there be to blame?

While I was packing boxes at the St. Vincent de Paul food pantry, they were running out of shampoo and size 4, 5, and 6 diapers. So if you can, they could use some donations because they are in this for the long haul. Here is the donation link.

<https://www.patreon.com/LyzLenz/posts/who-will-you-165124611> <https://www.patreon.com/LyzLenz>

Brad DeLong here: Sringfield, OH, has population of 60,000 of whom 15,000 or so are Haitian immigrants. The six corrupt neofascist Supreme Court justices headed by John Roberts gave the Trump administration go ahead to discriminate on the basis of race, and revoke TPS for Haitian and Syrian immigrants. The TPS-revocation deadline had, as of Lyz Lenz’s writing, slipped to Monday.

The tl;dr of this is this quote from Lyz Lenz: “One woman sighed and said, ‘But who will they blame when they [the Haitian immigrants] are gone?”

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