TikTokers Came to Springfield Looking for ICE. Then the Child Trafficking Rumors Began.

This story was originally reported by Amanda Becker of The 19th. Meet Amanda and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Residents of Springfield, Ohio, had been bracing for immigration agents to arrive on Feb. 3, the Trump administration’s expiration date for temporary protected status for Haitians, who make up nearly a quarter of the city’s population. A federal judge intervened at the last minute, pushing back the deadline indefinitely. The officers never arrived.

Yet the city found itself on edge this month, and the threat is as disturbing as it is familiar: online misinformation, this time accusing the very people trying to protect their immigrant neighbors from deportation of trafficking their children.

Before the 2024 election, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, then Republican running mates, amplified a rumor initially shared in a local Facebook group that Haitian immigrants were eating pets. Last Wednesday, TikTok creators, having seen none of the chaos they expected in Springfield, began suggesting that faith groups working with Haitian immigrants were diverting their resources. Then came allegations that Haitians were “threatened by the local community.” Less than 48 hours after arriving, they concocted a conspiracy theory that churches and nonprofits were actually working to deport Haitian parents to take their children.

“The destructive force they have brought is almost immeasurable,” said a leader of a faith-based coalition, who was reluctant to use her name or that of the organization since the creators have already taken their statements out of context and shared them on social media.

Americans around the world are trying to understand what’s happening in the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement hotspots, like Minneapolis and Springfield. As they search for information on social media, they are confronted with a torrent of misinformation, conspiracy theories and misleading propaganda. It comes from both political sides: some liberal Americans are using AI to generate the shadowy faces of masked immigration agents, even though they look nothing like they are in real life, and there are conservative Americans creating fake images of white women greeting federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as saviors.

Much of it focuses on children or women. Community leaders across the country are warning it could destabilize entire neighborhoods and cities, just as it did in Springfield.

The latest wave of misinformation to hit this city of about 60,000 echoes “Pizzagate,” when right-wing conspiracy theorists claimed during the 2016 presidential campaign that prominent Democrats were running a pedophilia ring. The culmination was the shooting of a believer at a popular Washington pizzeria. The conspiracy echoed across the internet for years, with teens on TikTok taking up the cause.

That’s how it happened in Springfield this month.

Finding no large-scale enforcement action from ICE agents on the streets, TikTok creators, who presented themselves as pro-immigration and anti-deportation, cited reports from “real Springfield residents” that groups helping Haitians were denying them aid. They sent people to a church who demanded proof of the help they were providing. One creator distorted media coverage, including that of The 19th, to construct the lie that churches and other groups were “trying to take these children from the Haitians and allowing their deportation without helping them.”

The lies took on a life of their own, as viral stories often do. The creators relied on each other’s rumors.

Creator Ohaji Free, who posted the video suggesting child trafficking was at play, declined to discuss it with The 19th. Dai’Marr Keys, who suggested that community groups were siphoning aid away from Haitians, wrote in an email that he did not stay in Springfield to confirm the details because he had received threats.

Several creators shared photos of Pastor Carl Ruby, whose church welcomed Haitian worshipers. Ruby soon began receiving harassing voicemails. Callers said things like, “All of America knows you’re complacent in trafficking innocent children,” “What’s going on with you guys taking their kids?” and “Hello, Carl. I was just wondering why you are interested in human trafficking and why you want to, for example, remove these children from families?”

Ruby spoke to local police, then the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. Schools and streets in downtown Springfield closed Monday due to unspecified security threats. Ruby said federal authorities told him that “rogue content creators” played a key role in amplifying the complaints of several disgruntled individuals, leading to the threatening messages he and his church received.

Ruby said in an interview Tuesday, as the calls continued to come in: “These attacks have just motivated me to stand with our Haitians and do everything we can to protect them… They cause a lot of problems, but they don’t really get under my skin.”