Residents of Springfield, Ohio, expressed significant apprehensions regarding crime and the rising number of migrants during a town hall meeting with Vivek Ramaswamy on Thursday. According to the Columbus Dispatch, the Biden-Harris administration has contributed to a 25 percent increase in the town’s population due to Haitian migration. Detractors of this trend characterize it as an invasion, resulting in fatalities, dislocated residents, and escalating insurance costs.

“There simply are too many mass migrants here in this town, and they’re too richly subsidized. It’s pushing people out of their homes. It’s pushing people out of their jobs,” one resident said during the town hall.

“We are at a level of desperation,” another meeting attendee stated. “We have been put down and called racists, not only in print but also to our faces at city commission meetings.”

A resident recounted an incident in which the police did not respond promptly after a man reportedly pursued her daughter wielding a machete.

“She was chased by a man with a machete on her way to work,” the mother recalled. “[She] called the police. She told them what had happened and wanted to file a report. Two hours later, the police still had not called her back and never checked on the crime.”

The mayor of the city, Rob Rue, received an invitation to participate in the meeting to listen to the concerns of the residents; however, he failed to attend.

“I’ve been a resident Springfield, Clark County for 61 years, [and] if our City Council and everybody wants to be a part of the solution – I’ve been sitting right there by the door, I haven’t seen a single one of them,” a fourth resident said at the event.

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