Abhorrence and fear of Haitian immigrants coming to Alabama to fill jobs in poultry plants had been building among conservative residents even before former President Donald Trump jolted the presidential campaign with his outlandish and thoroughly debunked claims that “they’re eating the pets.”
But in this state, which Trump carried in 2020 by a 25.5-percent margin, and other parts of the country where new immigrants have made an impression, a conspiracy theory fed by state and local officials is taking hold four weeks out from the Nov. 5 election.
The belief that the Biden administration is deliberately bringing immigrants into small communities so they can illegally vote in the election for the benefit of Vice President Kamala Harris is ricocheting through local mass meetings, halls of government and community Facebook pages.
The baseless narrative about non-citizen voting is seeding doubts about the election's outcome. It rests atop an aggregation of anxiety about cultural and language differences, misinformation about how both state voting laws and the federal immigration system work, and racist stereotypes about dark-skinned newcomers. Together, they reinforce a belief in the so-called “great replacement” — an idea with roots in the white supremacist movement — that has increasingly found mainstream acceptance within the GOP electorate since Trump was elected in 2016.
The notion that there is an incursion of immigrants orchestrated by the federal government, possibly with the intention of facilitating voter fraud, received a trumpet blast from Scott Stadthagen, the majority leader in the Alabama House of Representatives.
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“I think there’s no mistake that they’re coming,” Stadthagen said of the Haitian immigrants in his state during an interview on FM Talk 1065 last month. “It’s all organized. They’ve got EBT cards, working visas. They probably have voter ID cards, if I had to guess.
“It’s amazing how the federal government is allowing this to take place in the state of Alabama and other states,” he added.
Trump, whom Stadthagen praised during the radio interview, is among the loudest purveyors of the long-debunked claim. As far back as the run-up to the Iowa caucuses in January, Trump suggested that Democrats were encouraging immigrants to illegally come into the country so they could register them to vote in the election.
Many of the Haitian immigrants who have come to Alabama and other parts of the country in the past two years arrived under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s humanitarian “parole” program. This program provides “advance travel authorizations” for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan nationals. Under the program, they are eligible to work in the United States.
But unless they become naturalized citizens — a long and arduous process — they are not eligible to vote. And while U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services handles applications for citizenship, state governments hold responsibility for registering voters and running elections.
Asked about his speculation that immigrants present on “working visas” might “have voter ID cards,” Stadthagen said in a statement issued to Raw Story through a spokesperson that Alabama’s secretary of state, Wes Allen, “is taking solid steps to make sure that only American citizens vote in our election.” He added, “I completely support his efforts, and so does every Alabama voter I’ve spoken to on the issue. Only American citizens should vote in our election, and I cannot believe that is even a question.”
Stadthagen did not respond to follow-up questions from Raw Story about why he speculated about immigrants being improperly registered to vote, and whether he was concerned that his statement could undermine confidence in the outcome of the presidential election.
During the radio interview, Stadthagen also criticized a city council in Sylacauga, 50 miles southeast of Birmingham, for cutting off public comment about Haitian immigrants during a meeting earlier in the month.
“Do we know where the individuals we’re discussing are coming from, where their point of origin is?” David Phillips, a Sylacauga resident, asked during the meeting, which took place on Sept. 5. “Because you’re treating them like lawful U.S. citizens, which they are not.”
“I’m going to cut it off, because we have no reason… to launch an investigation or to treat people differently because of how they look,” Tiffany Nix, the council president, told him.
“These people came here from Haiti,” Phillips said. “Haiti is a failed state. Their president was assassinated in 2021. There is no way the State Department can vet these individuals.”
After the council abruptly adjourned the meeting, a woman stood up in the back of the chamber and protested that the government would “spend our tax money.”
“They speak French,” she continued. “Are the teachers going to be able to educate the children that speak French?”
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‘They intend to turn red states blue’
The notion that Haitian immigrants working in the state’s poultry plants are in Alabama as part of a scheme by the federal government to import illegal votes appears to have gained traction thanks in large part to the efforts of one man.
Jack B. Palmer, a former employee of the IT giant Infosys whose whistleblowing led to a $34 million settlement with the U.S. government for visa fraud and abuse of immigration systems in 2013, has traversed the state over the past two months addressing conservative residents concerned about Haitians living in their communities.
Speaking at a community meeting held at a church in Albertville, a small city north of Birmingham, in August, Palmer accused the Biden administration of “allowing unfettered immigration into the country to bolster the Democrats’ voting bloc in future elections,” according to an account of the meeting in the conservative outlet 1819 News.
During another community meeting at a church in Enterprise, located at the southern end of Alabama, 1819 News — which is widely read among Republican lawmakers and conservative voters in the state — reported that Palmer said the Haitian immigrants in Alabama were “illegal” because the program was “not authorized by Congress.”
The Biden administration expanded a program intended to provide humanitarian parole for immigrants from Venezuela by opening it to immigrants from Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua in January 2023. Twenty-one states, including Alabama, sued the Department of Homeland Security, claiming that the program exceeds the authority granted to the department by Congress, but a federal judge in Texas ruled in March that the plaintiffs did not have standing. The case is currently under appeal in the Fifth Circuit.
Reached by phone on Thursday, Palmer did not dispute that a federal judge has upheld the program, but he said that in his “opinion” it’s “illegal.”
During the meeting in Enterprise, Palmer repeated his previous claim about immigrant voting, according to 1819 News, which reported that he “warned the Democratic Party is trying to make ‘a new voting bloc’ and that ballots are ‘going out in Alabama only to illegal immigrants.’”
Palmer told Raw Story that the quotes on immigration and elections from 1819 News’ coverage of the meetings in Enterprise and Albertville accurately reflect his views.
“I mean, think about it,” he said. “If a Democrat lets you in the country, why would you not vote for him? That’s my opinion. What’s not my opinion is the cheap labor.”
An ‘uprising’ against Haitian immigrants
During that meeting in Enterprise, Palmer made another claim about Haitian immigrants, which would send local and state officials scrambling in a county 175 miles to the southwest.
Palmer reportedly told the audience that 1,000 Haitian immigrants were due to arrive in Baldwin County, across the bay from Mobile on the Gulf Coast, in the first week of October. He told Raw Story that since Haitians started coming to Alabama after the 2010 earthquake, he has “befriended the Haitian pastors, and this is where my information comes from.” The pastors, in turn, had learned the information from non-governmental organizations.
Two days after the meeting, the Baldwin County Citizens for Government Accountability Facebook page lit up with alarmist comments about the impending arrival of “thousands” of Haitians.
Donna Givens, who represents the county in the state House of Representatives, commented on the Facebook page, pledging to “stay on top” of the issue.
Commenters on the community's Facebook page erupted with fear and indignation as if the government was coddling a foreign enemy.
“Who are the local collaborators?” one man asked.
Some talked about stocking up on ammunition.
One woman warned that young, non-English speaking men in the dairy section at Walmart might stab local residents if they tried to squeeze past them while doing their shopping.
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“Why is the governor allowing this?” one woman asked. “Are they legal? Were they sent here to flip the state? Very concerning.”
“They intend to turn red states blue and the immigrants will all vote for a Democrat,” another woman responded. “This is a conspiracy at the worst.”
“I’m so concerned for our grandchildren,” yet another woman wrote. “Life as we knew it in America is over.”
However, no Haitian immigrants have materialized in the Gulf Coast county.
“As of now, we don’t have any evidence or any proof that such a thing is going to happen,” Baldwin County Administrator Roger Rendleman told Raw Story. “We have reached out to the federal authorities. They have not responded to any of our inquires, so we can’t necessarily say there isn’t. But as of right now, we have no evidence that such a thing has occurred or is going to occur.”
Palmer had an explanation.
“They have been deterred from coming to Baldwin, number one, because of the press and the uprising,” he told Raw Story on Thursday night. “Number two, the housing.”
Instead, he said, the immigrants will be coming to Marshall County, on the north end of the state.
Palmer provided Raw Story with a screenshot from a phone text exchange with someone he described as a Haitian-American pastor.
“Are they coming here or Mobile area?” Palmer asks.
“In Marshall County,” the pastor responds.
“So, they’re not going to the Mobile area any longer,” Palmer writes. “Do you know how many? We want to be prepared.
“I want to know how much money to ask for,” he adds.
“I’m unable to provide a definite number at the moment,” the pastor responds.
Fear of immigrant voting as part of a ‘great replacement’
The idea that the government is accelerating immigration as a scheme to bank more votes for Democratic candidates is not new, but it has moved into the political mainstream since Trump’s first run for president in 2015 and 2016, said Caleb Kieffer, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“With the idea of importing a new voting bloc, this has been a longtime idea within ‘great replacement’ — that this is a coordinated effort to import the immigrants that are going to be loyal to the Democratic politicians,” Kieffer told Raw Story. “This thinking has long been prevalent in extremist circles. With the anti-Haitian rhetoric, we are really seeing this making a jump to the mainstream and showing up in electoral campaigns.”
Palmer told Raw Story he is merely sharing facts, but he doesn’t blame local residents for being angry.
“The communities have a right to be pissed off,” he said.
As to whether critics of the Biden administration’s immigration policy are blowing the impact of new immigrants out of proportion, Palmer insisted that cultural differences matter.
“When you bring a culture to the United States, the culture doesn’t know what to do,” he said.
Baseless claims that the federal government is enabling Haitian immigrants to illegally vote coupled with racist depictions of Haitians as savage and incompatible with the dominant American culture are proliferating in other communities across the country.
Cheryl Batteiger-Smith, a former Republican candidate for Indiana House of Representatives, criticized a program to help Haitian immigrants in Evansville, Ind. obtain commercial driver’s licenses through a local community college during a podcast posted on Sept. 25.
“And once they get the driver’s license, we know that they’re gonna vote,” she said. “They’re gonna vote. This is what the whole Biden administration’s end goal is, is to get them in here. ‘See what they’ve done for you. We’ve given you this free housing, free medications, free training, free any and everything. We’re gonna give you credit cards that have thousands of dollars on them…. And then, in return, we want you to vote for us.’”
In nearby Vincennes, a commenter on the Take Back Vincennes and Knox County Facebook page taunted another user for saying that those raising fears about their Haitian neighbors were misinformed because they consume Fox News.
“Betcha sing a different tune when 1 of em tries to lure your child outside or just breaks out a swinging machete over some minor infraction,” the commenter wrote on the Facebook page. “They are literally living FREE OFF OF OUR BACKS. DON’T CARE WHO YAR. A COUNTRY WORTH A S--- SHOULD ALWAYS LOOK OUT FOR THEIR VETERANS AND CITIZENS 1ST.”
Similar dehumanizing language about Haitians came up during the meeting in Albertville, Ala.
“I’ve been to Haiti… I’m not trying to be ugly, but it’s got a smell to it,” one attendee said, according to the report by 1819 News. “These people have smells to them. And I’ll tell you, these people are not like us. They don’t assimilate. They’re not here to assimilate…. These people are kind of scary.”
A 2022 poll conducted by Southern Poverty Law Center and Tulchin Research found that seven in 10 Republicans agreed with the basic premise of “great replacement” — “that demographic changes in the United States are deliberately driven by liberal and progressive politicians attempting to gain political power by ‘replacing more conservative white voters.’”
The “great replacement” narrative was cited by white supremacist mass shooters in El Paso, Texas and Buffalo, N.Y. Kieffer said the belief in “great replacement” heightens the risk of violence, while cautioning that not every white conservative who believes that the government is deliberately scheming to replace their votes and way of life is going to resort to violence.
“There’s a certain dehumanization and othering that happens if you’re going to uphold that ideology,” he said. “There’s a sense of violence that can be coupled with it. We’ve seen mass shooters motivated by that. If people really believe that they’re being replaced, people who are predisposed to violence might act.”
Following the presidential debate in which Trump turned the spotlight on the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, the tensions in Sylacauga, Ala. received renewed attention. Laura Barlow Heath, a conservative member of Sylacauga City Council, warned Fox News Digital last month local residents’ anger could turn to violence.
“I have a lot of concerns of civil unrest if we continue to not have answers to give to the people,” she said. Heath went on to say that residents are “very protective of their property” while speculating that the immigrants might engage in vandalism because “their culture is very broken right now.”
Heath could not be reached for comment for this story.
It remains unclear whether the city has experienced any change in crime that can be linked to Haitian immigrants. But Ashton Fowler, one of Heath’s fellow council members, said his interactions with a small group of Haitian immigrants who started attending his church gave him no cause for concern.
“The ones at church with me are great people,” he said during the Sept. 5 council meeting. “They want to come into church, haven’t asked for a thing, and worship and go home.
“Just as you would go to another town and buy a house and live there, they’re doing the same,” Fowler added. “We can’t ask them or watch them like a specific criminal or anything if they haven’t committed a criminal act. We know they’re here. We hope that they can provide to our economy and do things that help Sylacauga.”
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