A caller reported to Clark County, Ohio officials that he saw Haitians stealing geese. They found no evidence.

An August call to a non-emergency number in Ohio fueled a false narrative spread by former President Donald Trump that Haitians were harming animals in Springfield, Ohio.

In an audio recording released by conservative media outlet The Federalist, a person can be heard speaking to the Clark County Communications Center, which serves Springfield. “I see a group of Haitians, there were about four of them, they all had geese in their hands,” he said.

The caller said he could not identify the full license plate number of the car the group was travelling in. He reported that the incident occurred near the intersection of Water and Warder Streets and involved two men and two women. When the operator asked how many geese the people had, he said, “Everyone had one.”

Several Instagram users shared a screenshot of the headline of The Federalist article – “EXCLUSIVE: Police audio and report confirm Haitian goose hunt in Ohio: ‘They had all the geese in their hands.'” – along with the audio track.

“They fact-checked Donald Trump on this during the debate,” said one such post by Trump supporter and commentator David J. Harris Jr. “I wish the media would just do their job.”

The posts were flagged as part of Meta's efforts to combat fake news and misinformation in its news feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

The existence of the audio recording and report does not “confirm” that geese are being hunted. Clark County officials did not dispute that the call was not an emergency. But they said they found no evidence — such as videos, photos or dead geese — to support the claim.

On September 10, during a debate with his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump said that dogs and cats were being eaten by people in Springfield, Ohio. We have assessed this as catastrophic; Springfield officials said they had no credible reports that this had happened.

An hour before the debate, a Federalist reporter on X posted his Sept. 10 article, which included an audio recording of the call and a link to a written call center report that showed the operator referred the caller to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. The Trump campaign also addressed the story in detail in a Sept. 10 press release summarizing the Federalist article.

PolitiFact contacted The Federalist reporter via email but did not receive a response. The news organization's co-founder posted a screenshot of PolitiFact's email inquiry to X but did not respond.

Springfield, which had a population of 58,000 in 2020, has welcomed 12,000 to 15,000 Haitian migrants in recent years, many of whom fled years of political unrest, according to city officials. Local authorities say rapid population growth has strained schools, housing and health care while creating cultural divisions and misinformation.

“There's a lot of misinformation about refugees and immigration and I don't know the status of every single person that's in this community,” said Melanie Wilt, president of the Clark County Commission, at a Sept. 10 press conference where she was asked about the reports of wildlife kidnappings. “But by and large, they're seeking asylum and refuge from a really bad situation in Haiti.”

Karina Cheung, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, told PolitiFact in a Sept. 14 email that the agency had found “no evidence” to support claims that Haitians were kidnapping wildlife from local parks.

Cheung said a wildlife official received and followed up on two calls from people reporting alleged cases of Haitians taking waterfowl from Snyder Park in Springfield, including the Aug. 26 report involving geese.

The other incident was reported on March 27. A caller claimed to have seen “three people grab a live duck and a goose, put them in a garbage bag and drive away.”

“Follow-up investigations have not found any evidence that any wildlife was illegally removed from the park in either case,” Cheung said.

Cheung submitted an incident report showing that the agency followed up on the report the next day, August 27. Cheung said the agency found no evidence to support the claim.

PolitiFact contacted the Clark County Communications Center and the Sheriff's Office on September 14 to request the audio recording and report, but did not receive an immediate response.

Wilt also said authorities have concluded that reports of kidnappings or killings of wildlife in local parks are unfounded.

“That is absolutely false,” she said during the Sept. 10 press conference. “My colleague, County Commissioner Sasha Rittenhouse, is there. She rode with the local game warden last week and asked that question, and we have it on good authority that this is an urban legend.”

Rittenhouse was also quoted in a September 11 Springfield News-Sun article telling commissioners she had found nothing to substantiate the claim: “No videos have surfaced, no pictures, no dead geese. There is nothing to prove that this is happening.”

PolitiFact has previously reviewed social media posts falsely claiming Haitian immigrants in Springfield were eating pets and wildlife. Among them was a photo of a man carrying a dead bird. However, we traced the image to an August Reddit post that said it was taken in Columbus, Ohio — about 48 miles east of Springfield.

Given the virality of this claim, we wondered if geese play any role at all in Haiti's cuisine or culture. We turned to New York-based Nadege Fleurimond, Haitian-born chef and author of several books, including “Haiti Uncovered: A Regional Adventure Into the Art of Haitian Cuisine.” Fleurimond's response: “No. Geese are not part of our cuisine. I have never heard of Haitians eating geese. I have occasionally seen geese wandering around a resort property in Haiti, but I have never seen them hunted or cooked.”

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