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

The small Ohio municipality of Springfield has made national headlines over the past weeks, thanks to tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants being surreptitiously dumped into the city by the Biden-Harris administration over the past three years. But Springfield isn’t the only “heartland U.S.A.” town suffering after being inundated with immigrants. This week, the America 2100 non-profit organization launched its own on-the-ground investigation in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, to expose how the rural town’s 2,000% increase in Haitian immigrants has impacted American residents.

Last week, America 2100 shared reports from locals and residents chronicling a steep increase in traffic accidents and a rise in violent crime, including Haitians attempting carjackings and mugging Americans outside liquor stores. The non-profit group noted, “It isn’t just Springfield. It’s happening everywhere. In Charleroi, Pennsylvania — a low-income town of just 4,000 — the immigrant population has increased by 2,000% over the past two years. And it’s almost all Haitians.”

In an interview with America 2100, Charleroi councilman Larry Celaschi said, “I wish I could come face to face for 60 seconds … with whoever was behind all this and bringing the immigrants into Charleroi…” He asked, “Where the hell’s the money that should be coming to Charleroi, okay? Why was it all dumped on us, and we’re not being funded with anything. Okay, and again, we can’t even make ends meet with our budget, and so now how — where are we gonna get this extra revenue to pay for them?” Celaschi concluded, “And so now we’ve got to do all these things to accommodate the immigrants. That’s bull****.”

On Monday, America 2100 visited Charleroi, saying, “The media won’t tell their story — so we will.” One resident who was “born and raised” in Charleroi told America 2100 Senior Adviser Nate Hochman that the 2,000 Haitian immigrants have clogged up the small town’s sewage system. “You can smell the raw sewage,” he said. “These 120-year-old pipes can’t handle all the sewage that’s getting pumped into them … from all the people that came in.”

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.”

“This is one of the most immediately obvious aspects of the immigration crisis in Charleroi,” Hochman noted. “The big businesses are buying up homes in town and packing them with as many as 15-20 Haitians per property. It’s essentially converting the entire town into a gigantic workers’ barracks.”

Local parents reported that schools are being overwhelmed and forced to divert funds to hire multiple interpreters. “They’re having a huge problem, I think, with trying to teach,” one mom said. “There were 45 Haitians that started kindergarten this year,” she added. Another parent explained, “A kindergarten class is probably no more than 60 at most, at most.” Hochman asked, “So like the majority of the kindergarten is Haitian now? In what? Two years?” The parents nodded and replied, “Yeah.” One of the parents noted, “One of the things … about the not speaking English … middle school grades where parents are having a problem because their kids can’t advance because the teachers are having to compensate for the kids who can’t speak English.”

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.”

Delivery driver Andy explained how the immigrant influx has destroyed Charleroi’s economy and job market. “That’s what these staffing agencies are doing. … They said, ‘We can’t find people to work.’ Well, that’s a half-truth. There’s people that would work if you paid them, you know … the going wage for the work,” Andy said. He continued, “But they want to pay less and so they ended up hiring these, getting involved with these agencies that bring in these workers.” He added:

“Those jobs that they [Haitian immigrants] have, they used to be American jobs. But they [employers] decided, ‘We don’t want to pay five bucks more an hour, we’ll pay three bucks more an hour and we’ll take that off the top and we’ll keep that, and we’ll bring in Haitians with them through this work program.’ It’s a lot of jobs that have been lost by Americans. So they bring in … people from third-world countries who will do that work for poverty wages. And they think it’s a great deal — and it probably is a good deal for them.”

“You get a lot of people saying they’re illegals and everyone wants to fight about that term, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is what’s going on and how it’s affecting everybody,” Andy summarized.

Truck driver Ernie told America 2100 how the immigration has increased the cost of living in town, while decreasing the quality of actually living in Charleroi. “This used to be just a nice, blue-collar, middle-of-nowhere town. It was affordable to live in, wasn’t a terrible neighborhood, you could raise your family here and live your life and everybody would just pretty much leave you alone,” Ernie began. He continued, “But I don’t know if it’s going to come back from this, I don’t know if we’re going to come back from this. It’s at the point now, I think they’ve just destroyed the town and they bought all these properties.”

He said that while you “might be able to buy a house cheap,” Charleroi homeowners now have to worry about what kind of neighbors they’ll have. “Right now, I’m surrounded by the immigrants, never used to be that way. They don’t care about their property, they’ll destroy it, run through, steal your stuff, break your stuff. There’s no pride anymore. Nobody cares about anything,” he said, speaking from experience. The truck driver continued, “You’re bringing in people from one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere, paying them nothing because they don’t know what a dollar is, then you got this company who’s buying the houses, renting off them. I mean, it’s full all-around corruption, extortion, somebody’s lining their pockets.”

“We’re over here struggling. I make a pretty decent wage and I’m picking up a second job to try to help cover the bills, my girlfriend’s working two jobs to try to cover the bills,” Ernie said. He added, “And it never used to be like that.” Addressing the number of longtime Charleroi residents leaving town due to the immigration issues, Ernie said, “It’s killing another small town in America. … There’s a lot of fighting people around here and it takes a lot for people to quit. It’s happening. Whenever you see the natives — from this area in particular — going somewhere else, it’s bad.”

Lifelong Charleroi resident Tom talked about the cultural conflicts arising from the mass importing of 2,000 Haitians. “They don’t have anything in common with our culture. … When people say ‘the culture,’ a lot of times they say they don’t know what it means. What culture means is the way we do things around here. Worldwide, that’s what culture is,” Tom said. He continued, “What I’ve seen … since the influx has started is they have no interest in our culture, this culture. They’ve brought their culture here.”

Tom also dismissed the claim that the immigration surge somehow enriches or betters the town. “I don’t believe that argument of ‘They had to bring that population here to save Charleroi’ has any validity. We weren’t prepared for it, we don’t have the tax base for it. This is a town of 4,000 people hanging on the best they can,” he said. He continued:

“So whoever is responsible for putting them here, that is an act of negligence. And when it’s found out who directly decided that this was a good place to do this, they should be held accountable fully, their feet should be held to the fire long-term. They should never be allowed to work in the industry again, whether it’s politics or business, because what they’ve done here is despicable — and they don’t know that because, again, nobody cares about Charleroi, Pennsylvania. The 4,000 people that lived here cared about it and were doing their level best to make it a place to live and want to be.”

Tom shared that, due to the problems caused by the mass migration, he has pulled his son out of school and is selling his house. “If you told me, after all of the other garbage that has been heaped on this community since the early 80s, that this would be the denouement, I would have mortgaged my house and bet you were wrong,” he said. “But here we are,” he concluded.

So who is responsible? Hochman explained, “Charleroi — like Springfield — is a story of Republican betrayal. The people we’ve met here are just trying to survive. They deserve better leaders.” According to America 2100, the state senator representing Charleroi, Camera Bartoletta (R-Washington County), has “put out a statement attacking Trump for talking about the Haitian immigration crisis in her town.” In a statement posted to Facebook, Bartoletta said, “For some of these people saying awful things about these Haitian immigrants, I’d ask them what it might have been like for their parents or grandparents or great grandparents who might have come from another country and spoken a different language.” She added, “Many of the Haitians in Charleroi have been here for two or three years already. They escaped horrific events in Haiti, many having to travel/hide in the jungles for months or years.”

While Senator Bob Casey (D-Penn.) has claimed to be “fighting for the 300+ jobs at a glass manufacturing plant in Charleroi,” the small town’s mayor and a councilman said otherwise. “He needs to get his hind end out here in person and stop wasting time and stop sending aides,” one of the men said. He continued, “We need to talk to the man who holds the title United States Senator and he needs to be here in the borough of Charleroi and he needs to stop what is going to take place that is going to totally decimate this town.”