Immigrants were revitalizing tiny Charleroi. Then Trump’s attacks brought white supremacists

Diogenes

Nemo me impune lacessit

The day after former President Donald Trump returned to Butler, Pa., for a rally, Marie Occimabia, 68, stood 75 miles away in her shop surrounded by unsold clothing, luggage, and hair supplies. There were no customers.


Occimabia emigrated to Florida from Haiti in 1991, and in 2019, she moved her store to Charleroi, Pa. to join a growing Haitian community.

But now, she said, her customers hadn’t been going out much since Trump began disparaging Haitian immigrants, first in Springfield, Ohio, and soon after, in Charleroi, where he said Haitian immigrants brought a crime surge and financial strain to the town, claiming that it’s on the precipice of bankruptcy.

Trump’s attacks on the Western Pennsylvania town appear to have emboldened people. Conservative YouTubers panned their cameras around Charleroi’s streets looking for Haitians, and a Ku Klux Klan flier circulated. Massive stickers promoting a white supremacist group declaring “Reclaim America” appeared on traffic signal boxes.

Augusta “Queen” Goll, 43, the owner of Queen’s Market, cried when she removed Trump stickers from her car. She believed he was strong and patriotic, and encouraged hard work. But his comments about Haitian immigrants hurt both her feelings and her business — most of her customers are Haitian. He lost her vote, she said.

“I gotta be with my people.”

She said she wishes Trump would leave immigrants alone, like the Haitians she knows in Charleroi who are already legally living, working, and paying taxes after being granted Temporary Protected Status — a humanitarian legal status that Trump wants to revoke.


 

Residents Fear Small Penn. Town Won’t ‘Come Back from This’ after Biden-Harris Import Thousands of Haitian Immigrants​


Another resident also complained about the “absolutely disgusting” lack of hygiene among the immigrants and how it has impacted the town. “I feel bad for a lot of these people,” said Andrew, who does housing repairs. “And then some of these houses you go into … they live like they still live in a clay building in Port-au-Prince and they just want to keep it how it was,” he continued. Andrew explained that the houses the Haitian immigrants live in are “disgusting,” recounting that he once spent three days simply scrubbing a kitchen after Haitians vacated a house, before moving on to cleaning the rest of the house. He noted the massive increase in immigrants over the past two years, saying, “The agencies, they just keep bringing these people in and bringing people in and bringing people in.”

Parents also observed that crimes against American students have increased. “There’s been some assaults with some kids on the bus,” a Charleroi mom said. She recounted, “One student attacked another American child on the bus. … And I guess he was like 20.” The girl who was attacked, the mom said, was about 14 years old. She continued, “He told the girl to move and she said, ‘No,’ and he grabbed her — and like really grabbed her — and like wouldn’t let her go. Like they just get on the bus and like go to school, you know, with like the elementary kids, just to get a ride to school.” The mom added, “The school does nothing about it. People complain all the time about things and they do nothing.”


Yup....revitalizing with 3rd World filth!
 
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