(NewsNation) —Republican Ohio senator JD Vance doubled down on controversial comments he’s made about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, saying he is “concerned for the American citizens” in the city during the vice presidential debate Tuesday.
“In Springfield, and communities across this country, you have schools that are overwhelmed, housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes,” Vance said while debating Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
“The people I’m worried about in Springfield are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris’ open border.”
When corrected by the moderators that the Haitian immigrants in the city are legal under the Temporary Protected Status program, Vance went on a tangent discussing immigration laws.
Vance faced a slew of criticism for repeating false allegations that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating neighbor’s pets.
Last month, Vance made a series of posts and statements about the Haitian immigrant population in Springfield, Ohio.
He posted on X, without evidence, that Springfield has experienced “a massive rise in communicable diseases, rent prices, car insurance rates, and crime.”
Later he said his office “has received many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who’ve said their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants,” adding, “It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”
Following Vance’s initial post, the internet subsequently exploded with AI-generated imagery of Trump appearing to rescue dogs, cats and birds from harm, with Trump posting several of the memes to his own Truth Social account.
Trump repeated the claim during the presidential debate against Kamala Harris.
More than 30 bomb threats have been made against schools, government buildings and city officials’ homes since Trump’s comments, forcing evacuations and closures.
Springfield also canceled its annual celebration of diversity, arts and culture in response to the threats, and on Tuesday, state police were deployed to city schools.
He has also gotten heat over several resurfaced comments on childless women and violent marriages.
In a 2021 interview with former Fox News talk show host Tucker Carlson, Vance said that the U.S. was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
The then-Senate candidate specifically mentioned Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York as examples.
Vance drew widespread criticism over his words, but stood behind them calling it a “sarcastic comment.”
Trump defended his running mate saying he believed Vance’s comments meant that he’s “strongly family-oriented.”
In another set of resurfaced comments from a 2021 event, Vance criticized people leaving marriages, even when they are violent.
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“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that like, well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy, and so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term,’” Vance said, according to Vice.
The founder of the organization Moms Demand criticized his comments on X.
“JD Vance said women are obligated to stay in ‘violent’ marriages,” Watts wrote. “Each month, 70 women are fatally shot by intimate partners in the US, and 1 million women alive today have been shot or shot at by intimate partners.”